#which is Incorrect but not worth harassing anyone about

[eldritchmochi]

i have the seasons soup mugs from 2000, which are squatter and wider than your average coffee mug by a significant amount, and also dont have that eyecatching label design, so it doesnt really look like a novelty *coffee* mug

the thing that im so baffled by about it is the bit about how this mug (at one point mugs, but one got lost in a move) have always been with my bowls, always on a different shelf than my regular mugs, frequently in a different cabinet from both my regular mugs and my standard glasses, AND i pretty much always give specific directions on where to find glasses for water because my kitchen organization isnt quite intuitive compared to a lot of people's since, while im tall, i have hella joint issues that means common use items have to be as low as possible. how people always go to the wrong cabinet and without fail unearthed my damn soup mug from behind other shit where i stash it because its not common use, i havent the foggiest

i have much more eyecatching and goofy coffee mugs *right there*, and currently my glasses are really cool too so why??

[texasthoughtsaboutnothing]

EDIT: I have received several new pieces of information that I'm distributing throughout the doc that further reinforces my stance on this, and is valuable to know. Also, I have sections where I'm more clear on my stance after thinking on it for a while and following more discussions on this. I hope I don't disappoint anyone with my thoughts.

If any part of what I've written here resonated with you, I shamelessly ask that you spread it in your preferred manner, and if you feel there's parts that need work please let me know.

Still gonna regret writing this, I'm sure.

[Warning: Long. Like, really.]

Because of all the shit happening with Arknights, PM is under fire once again as it ties into the larger narrative surrounding Korea and its full on gender war (a real thing that's apparently happening).

For those who don't know, way back in July Limbus Company got the event for 4.5 that included swimsuit versions of Ishmael and Sinclair. The fact that Ishmael was in a full bodysuit while Sinclair was shirtless with a collar led the Korean equivalent of 4chan to accuse PM's lead illustrator of being a feminist, which I guess is a bad thing if you're drowning in Korean culture war bullshit.

Turns out the lead illustrator was a man so they pivoted to the CG artist Vellmori and invented a whole host of bullshit links between her and an extremist group to try and get her fired.

And in accordance with their wishes PM fired her. Except they didn't. Probably?

Most everything known from this point onwards is, bluntly, tainted. It's a lot of machine translated Korean posts or, one way or the other, hasty conclusions from people with agendas (including me, no one is immune to propaganda).

Did Vellmori reach out to a newspaper to whistleblow on PM's flagrant disregard for worker's rights? That was the story at first but follow-ups implied it might be a complete fabrication or an overstatement of her grievances (EDIT, I have received information that while there was a phonecall to Vellmori from PM, it was to set up a meeting to properly hash out next steps and any claims she was fired over the phone are incorrect, and the newspaper that reported as such quietly retracted that statement).

Did a labor union jump the gun on spreading this story to gain political capital without reaching out to PM for their side of the story? Maybe if PM's version of events is true, but that's assuming a lot of malice of an institution doing it's best (EDIT, I have received information that the people directly responsible for handling the PM issue acted independently and were later found in violation of several union laws, including allegations involving CP that I do not want to and will not get into).

PM's story is that once the harassment flared up and involved physical visits to the development office, Vellmori wanted to quit. (EDIT, I have received information that the wording of the various statements can be interpreted as Vellmori leaving of her own volition but also under encouragement; if you see claims that she was forced to resign this is what that claim references.) There was a rumor about her getting 2 years of severance pay, but I don't know if that was ever corroborated and is likely false, but she would have gotten something in accordance with Korean Law which they were found in compliance of.

Everything after announcing her termination of contract (not translating the initial announcement, framing it as a company policy issue, keeping quiet on it for months, constant vague threats of lawsuits) was supposedly a bad attempt at trying to quell the harassment by making it go away. Instead, it exploded, and now if you're a fan you'll have to deal with this coming up forever. I know there's fans who follow me that'll resent me for making this post as they just want to move on (or think I'm wrong or misrepresenting some details).

I resent making this for what its worth, and am trying my best to be accurate, but for me this is part of moving on, acknowledging the bad and the factors that mitigate it. And yes, I think there are several mitigating factors.

Why did Cassie Wei, lead singer of Project Mili who is both Korean and a woman, speak out in KJH's defense?

Why hasn't, to my knowledge, Vellmori said anything since and by and large just disappeared if she was so poorly mistreated?

Why have, again to my knowledge, none of the Voice Actors and Actresses spoken out against PM in solidarity?

Why do PM continue to have partnerships with progressive companies like Arc System Works?

Why did the labor union retract their statements against PM and apologize following an actual investigation?

EDIT: New info. Why did the labor union censure the people responsible for handling the PM issue, who later quit the group seemingly in disgrace?

Why did PM not bring their own lawyers to the meeting with Vellmori while she was allegedly encouraged to bring hers?

None of these questions completely absolve PM of wrongdoing, if you were set on condemning them it's not hard to interpret each in a very uncharitable way. For example, most of this is easily answered by the fact we live under Capitalism and we inevitably all have to swallow our morals and ideals to make rent. I could retort that maybe PM did the same by capitulating in any degree to harassment (which they have done historically as what happened with Ruina's ending) and not specifically endorsing any ideology or political belief (which is wild considering the actual content of their stories). But I think that ends with a circular argument that boils down to whether you believe in PM or not.

To be clear, even if you want to interpret all the Vellmori stuff as charitably as possible, PM undeniably fucked up and has labor issues in its history. The artist for the manga Leviathan, Monggeu, came out during the whole thing to speak on her treatment as a contractor; how she was given an impossible workload and the company denied her requests for delays, delays caused in part by suicidal depression caused by the workload. Though KJH personally apologized to her, she was let go over the phone and spoke out only after she felt the company now had a pattern of abusive work policies. The author of Wonderlab also deleted her stuff in solidarity.

That's all bad. Really bad. I stopped playing Limbus because I felt extreme disappointment with the company and managerial tendencies of KJH. Credit to a reddit user I won't name for pointing this out, but this information is far more concrete than anything involving Vellmori as Monggeu broke her silence independently months after things happened on her personal Twitter. However, there isn't nearly as much focus on this or calls for Justice for Monggeu.

This opinion is mine and mine alone, but her situation, which I must stress was awful and shameful on PM's and KJH's part, doesn't tie into a culture war like "Vellmori being fired for feminist tweets" does. It is a clear cut example of bad labor and managerial practices that lead to harm towards an employee, but its an everyday tragedy, not a martyrdom. And so I wonder how much the treatment of labor is actually part of this discussion, the more actionable issue than changing all of Korean society. I wonder if PM's supposed kowtowing to incels is highlighted above all other context because it casts PM as an enemy in a culture war.

I say the above because I've seen online culture war stuff happen before, and it scares me beyond just whether a company I like gets redeemed in the eyes of others. I have seen lives destroyed in the name of a just cause for nothing, including good progressive causes like feminism. If the only thing that would satisfy or lead to forgiveness is a revolutionary purge, do you actually want to build anything?

I digress, and I hope I didn't turn you off too much with my thoughts and fears there. It's important though, because there was ultimately an apology from PM.

In it, among other things, they laid out their flawed logic on how they wanted to handle the situation, addressed their treatment of both current employees and past contractors, and promised to improve and protect employees better. Since then, things seem to have changed at least from an outsiders' perspective. The game moved away from a strict list of deadlines and towards a more open-ended dev pipeline. The game is less buggy than it used to be after updates. They changed policies on content to make it easier to produce by limiting VA without any blowback from their VA's so we can assume proper talks were had. Translations don't have as many errors as they used to while the quality has been maintained even after losing a major translator (which is its own tale of baffling choices by the company in its own right). And they've kept all this up for Season 3 so far without any announcements of delays and, in fact, far more content than usual. All of this, to me, points to better management.

Maybe I'm naive to think so but I want to believe that the evidence points to the crimes of PM not coming from a place of malice and antifeminism but incompetence. I need to stress KJH didn't kill or rape anybody, nor was he verbally or physically abusive. He was a really shitty boss, and I understand how much it sucks to have a shitty boss, believe me. But a shitty boss can become not shitty, and my hope is that happened already, and that a company that produces good art that's worthwhile will thrive as a result.

I say all this because I actually care about this company and art it produces. If I didn't, last July wouldn't have hurt so much. If I'm cringe for it, so be it, but I believe constructive change should be recognized and rewarded, and it's for those reasons I came back after following the game for the rest of its second season.

To be clear, you don't owe a company your time or your money even if they improve their culture and policies, and if you felt that what PM or KJH has done is unforgivable you are well within your rights not to engage with it ever again or even tell others about your grievances, as much as I might disagree. But if you want them to suffer, to lose business, maybe even to go under despite how many other women work for and with them... I don't know. Please don't just think of these people as enemy units in the war against feminism? Ask yourself that if Vellmori broke her silence tomorrow and asserted she left of her own volition and condemned groups like the PMUA, would you believe her or immediately assume she's under duress?

This is not a cut and dry, black and white moral issue where a great evil needs vanquishing, it's a messy as hell moral and labor issue involving multiple people wrapped up in larger cultural and social issues no one initially involved intended. There are real people involved who stand to get hurt, not to mention who's been hurt already. Justice can involve other things than a firing squad. Please at least acknowledge that much. inb4 "No and kindly die"

EDIT, regarding the lawsuits. If you didn't know, PM is currently suing the labor union and a separate organization once called the PMUA (Project Moon Users Association) now called the KGA (Korean Gamer Association). I have seen unconfirmed reports that the former has ties to the disgraced Korean Ratings Board exposed by Blue Archive Fans for crypto bullshit. In addition, I have seen criticisms of how the PMUA used donations and their effectiveness in actual addressing PM and its labor issues, including demonstrations on days workers and management weren't even present and being the ones responsible for leaking documents that Vellmori allegedly wanted to be kept private. All of that supports PM's allegations that these organizations were in fact targeting them as part of political ploys and they never cared about any of the victims or ideals they touted as representing. For all the above, PM is suing for defamation, which is well within their rights by my reckoning. Regardless of my thoughts, this is where we are now.

Last and by no means least, feminism is good. Wanna be clear on that, I believe in equal pay, reproductive rights, that grip strength is a stupid metric to measure human rights by, that men are not owed sex and love by women regardless of circumstance, the whole shebang.

Also, what's happening in South Korea is scary and serious and bigger than just a terminally online culture war shitfest, more like an active bomb about to explode. I support the women who live there and their fight for equality, I just don't think PM fundamentally has anything to do with it and constantly trying to drag it into the line of fire feels like faux activism. I think the scope of the gender war is very far beyond the limits of gacha game discussion, or for that matter the actions of a single company of, like, 50 people.

(I swear to god if Vellmori makes a post tomorrow accusing KJH of SA or something after I wrote all this I will throw myself into the ocean.)

This will actually be the last time I talk about this unless something changes, I want to believe I was respectful the whole time and don't mean to belittle anyone for their beliefs or choices (unless you're an incel, please be better, also take a shower).

[just-orbiting-you]

I find it interesting how frequently JK says something to/about jimin that could be used against jimin by antis and then jkkrs scramble to explain and try to find a different meaning to what he said. Why does everything he says need a lengthy explanation to clarify he didn't mean this or that? As soon as i saw the trailer i knew antis were going to latch on to the " i miss the members" part and Jimin saying he's a member too. And this is the beginning, Jk is going to say a lot more vague things on the show that could be used against jm. It's a pattern and I'm prepared lol. Reminds me of when he said he wanted to go to special forces in that live and jkkrs had to search up every military department to find minor differences bw his and tae's. I'm not a jkkr but I admit i enjoy watching their interactions, until JK says something like that and the haters are given new material to harass jm then I'm like yeah I can't be on board with this ship. I'm fully expecting a lot more when the episodes are released.

I personally believe you have the target on the wrong back. last week my blog was full of a discussion on whether the members act in ways to get fan attention. posting publicly to social media i think could be open for more debate but largely, i think bts have a solid few of army that isn't broken down into quadrants like fans view it (ot7s vs. solos. vs. shippers, etc.). it is hard to make a conclusive decision, since we don't know them personally, but.

i really don't think jungkook is conniving enough to plan out ways in which he can draw jimin antis out on twitter. i don't believe jungkook trying to plot the downfall of jimin. in my view, jungkook has demonstrated that him and jimin are very close and care for each other very deeply. i don't see him as someone would do such a thing.

point blank. it is the stans. not jungkook.

with all due respect, in this ask you are following the agenda pushed forward by these solos, looking for anyway to make jungkook the enemy. in the name of protecting jimin from these antis, you are doing the same to jungkook.

of course, there are stans that say things that are a lot worse. but throwing the blame on jungkook here, saying he starts the hate is just incorrect.

realistically, a comment about how he misses the members, wishing they could be here to experience this with jikook, (which EVERY SINGLE MEMBER has said in behind the scenes from solo era by the way) should not cause this much of a stir. but tkkrs will find a way to say jungkook wasn't happy while shooting this show, he was forced to do this, and he's not happy with jimin ever. do you see how the stans are projecting this narrative??

i think stan twitter and stan spaces in general have a way of poisoning the fan experience. realistically we should all just be happy that we got this show and that jikook worked hard in preparation for its release. but instead minds get plagued by how jikook's actions will have stan repercussions.

there needs to be a reframing of shipping at large, because i think it does more harm than good as we can see from your ask and anti behavior. i've largely disengaged with trying to prove ships are real and just began to appreciate jikook as a duo. and that's enough for me. yeah i'll make gay jokes and ponder it sometimes, but it isn't worth the inevitable disappointment when you realize they probably can never tell us about their relationship.

Why does everything he says need a lengthy explanation to clarify he didn't mean this or that?

you're calling direct attention to the problems that arise when you focus on the details to try and find the truth. again, i engage with this myself sometimes, i've done it on this blog. but do it enough with the wrong motivations and you drive yourself crazy. that is the space in which stans operate in.

while it's brought up, if anyone has the clip or the timestamp where jungkook said he wanted to go to special forces please let me know. because i looked it up recently and could only find an tkkr edited video where it doesn't even look like jungkook said a word.

i personally believe there's a lot more in jikook that can't be twisted in a way that doesn't look ridiculous than stuff that can be used against them in a tkkr sense. i hope you're able to find enjoyment in the show beyond the stan narratives, because i really think it will be such a comforting show to watch.

[wehatejulietsimms]

A/N: i'm gonna respond to this in sections bc it's quite long so bare with me.

Howdy y’all, 🤠 again. Yes, I didn’t in fact die. I’m sorry though that I kept getting sidetracked and couldn’t submit this until now, my boss decided to keep dumping her work into my lap. So I just wanna preface this by stating that I’m going to try and say what I want to as coherent as possible, but I have pretty severe ADHD so I’m not always as easy to understand as I think I am in my head, and I often go off on tangents, over explain things and circle back to topics randomly without realizing. Im basically going to go over their relationship over the years as I said previously (I’m not gonna go into detail about every single scandal and shitty thing Juliet did over the years, because we’d be here all year. so I figure I won’t cover them here, but rather let people ask specific questions if they want to. Remember, I was present for pretty much everything so feel free to ask.😊), but I’m also going to do kind of a mini deep dive into Andy’s behavior and actions (because although the snakes will hit you with every excuse in the book, and tell you that you’re looking too far into things and that it doesn’t matter, it does. The way a person acts in general and towards people around them is very relevant when talking about someone’s health, happiness, and well-being.) To start off, let’s take it all the way back to the time before Juliet’s reign of terror, when Andy and Scout were still together. In all honesty from what I saw of them together (and I saw pretty much everything they posted, I’m only a year younger than Andy, and I was quite into him when he was on MySpace and such, and I always watched anything with him and Scout together because they were fucking adorable lol) they had a really healthy relationship. Not once did I get weird vibes from them. The way Andy acted toward and with Scout, you could tell they really loved each other and were happy together. They had nothing to prove. It just was normal. (For any of you who are younger, or didn’t come into the picture until Andy was already post-scout and would like to see some videos of them together, you could generally search on YouTube for it, but also there’s a specific channel on there called like bring the milk tea or something that has videos of old Andy blogs and also Andy and scout on stickam and such. Worth a look if you’re curious) They weren’t constantly all over each other like possessive pack dogs *ahem Juliet ahem* and whenever Andy mentioned scout he didn’t need to shower her in compliments. They both seemed very secure in both themselves and the relationship. Super cute. Initially when they broke up it seemed quite odd. I didn’t really expect it. It got even weirder when he states that he and Juliet are together. It didn’t feel like they fit together at all (and no I’m not talking about from a fame or success perspective. At least not yet lol) As I’ve said I got bad vibes from Juliet right from the get go. Andy already seemed to be acting not like himself. (Also snakeys have argued that it’s just that he’s more mature now and that’s why he acts nervous and constantly looks Ike he wants to die. 🙄 maturity doesn’t mean losing your fucking personality and being unhappy most of the time. Jesus Christ.) it seemed like they got possessive of each other and constantly needed to show people how in love they were. Pictures, videos, and fucking public love paragraphs to show they are, in fact, in a super real relationship and they love each other. It also felt like Andy’s family was in on this whole weird charade.They (Chris honestly) started to defend her degenerate behavior and attack anyone who had even a whisper of negative things to say about her or their relationship. It was like watching a group of awkward, pretty mediocre actors put on a play about them being together. (I’ve hit the text limit now, but there will be more that I will write just after I submit this one though, fear not haha. N, you can either post this now or wait until I submit the rest, it’s up to you.) 1 / ? -🤠

A/N: i was here for a lot of it as well so i do remember some of this. although i did join the fandom shortly after him and juliet got together (i joined like around the time she was on the voice) i literally remember hoping that him and scout would get back together bc juliet just rubbed me the wrong way and i didn't know why at the time. & side note i actually do recommend people go look at old videos of andy and scout they were really adorable. there is this one video of them singing (i think a carrie underwood song lol) in the car and it's really cute. but yeah just bc he's older doesn't mean his whole entire personality changes. you can be any age and act however you want. i could even use jenna marbles & julien solomita (a youtube couple) as an example, they've been together for i think like 8 or 9 years and are about the same age as A&J (julien being around andy's age & jenna around juliet's age) & although they can have mature adult conversations and all of that, they still act like idiots and joke around together. neither of them look uncomfortable or are afraid of saying certain things like andy is around juliet. so andy aging doesn't mean shit in regards to his personality doing a 180.

🤠okay, so part two here we go. (Also I apologize if I get the chronological order of anything I talk about incorrect, I’m a bit scattered sometimes and the next ask I make will be the one where I talk about the domestic abuse and I tend to get quite heated, which only makes my brain function worse lol) so the point at which Andy was trying to get fans to go vote for/ support Juliet when she was on the voice seemed really fishy. I’m all for supporting the work of the people you love, but it’s kinda strange how hard Andy was pushing this at the time. Too hard in my opinion. I’m obviously aware that it was helpful in the end and he more or less got what he was asking for. But it was like he absolutely needed people to vote for her. As if he would get in trouble if they didn’t. So around 2012 or 2013 it felt like things really went down the shitter from there and just got progressively worse. (I never knew why for the longest time, but after they revealed that Vegas wedding that happened in about that time frame, it made a lot of sense.) Andy’s behavior began to change towards his fans. There are a lot of accounts of this happening from fans themselves and a lot of people said that 1. It was worse with Juliet around, and 2. a lot of the time it would happen towards females especially. ( I think more towards the “pretty” fans but don’t count me on that, I don’t know for sure.) This was completely night and day. Especially coming from the same man who used to always defend his fans and once stated something along the lines of he would never have a crazy or awkward fan story because he loves and is grateful for all of his fans and he won’t get upset if they’re just really excited. I would understand if these fans crossed the line in some way (like the later incident of fans finding his address and harassing them, which is unacceptable no matter who the people are) but from most if not all of the fan stories I’ve heard, they didn’t. They were being respectful and didn’t do anything to warrant this happening to them besides showing up. Which brings me to my next point, a lot of these negative experiences were caused by Juliet. Either she was the one being mean to people, she was causing Andy to be mean to people on her behalf, or her presence was upsetting Andy to the point that he was angry and started being rude and irritable. What scares me the most are the accounts of Andy having a whole Jekyll and Hyde thing, depending on weather or not Juliet was present. Happy when he’s free of her and miserable when he isn’t. In videos of him where Juliet is behind the camera he always seems nervous and strange. Like he’s afraid to mess up. That’s fucking alarming to say the least. You would think that the last thing one would want to do if another person brings them this much anger, stress, and anxiety, the LAST thing they would want to do is fucking marry them. Right? He literally started barely smiling at one point and really doesn’t anymore. I mean for Christ’s sake look at his wedding photos. What’s suppose to be one of the happiest moments of your life and to quote another anon with a different ask, he looks like he’s being dragged to the gallows. (And I get really fucking Angry honestly when snakeys tries to pass it off as “oh he’s awkward he doesn’t know how to smile” or “omg he’s being dramatic for the aesthetics” in some pictures, yes. But why the fuck would you look like that in pictures with the “love of your life” who you now regularly write cringy paragraphs publicly professing your love and complete adoration for? Andy knows how to smile genuinely. Ffs he used to. He smiled genuinely when he was a kid, he smiled genuinely with scout, and he smiled genuinely when Juliet wasn’t around. He doesn’t smile when she is there, and if he does, it is pretty much always visibly fake.) So I may backtrack a little later, but right now I want to talk about the fact that Juliet IS an abuser. More specifically, the plane incident. (Word limit. TBC.) 2 / ? -🤠

A/N: yes. 100%. when it comes to the wedding photos i will never understand people (specifically snakeys) writing off his behavior as him "just being dramatic for the aesthetics". is that something he would do in photoshoots? yeah. is it something he may do on stage? sure. something he would do in an interview? maybe. but candid shots of him on one of the "happiest days of his life"? wtf no. & idk why people think that.

🤠 Just before I start, again, with the pictures, I really don’t think that Andy is enough of a self absorbed egotistical dick that he would actually sit there and put on the whole “miserable tough guy” act in every fucking photo he takes. Ah yes, the infamous plane incident. So straight up, Juliet exposed herself as an abuser, and brought out every bullshit excuse in the book (and made Andy go along with them) to try to cover it up. 1. She was drunk. Honestly this is total bullshit. I say this same thing when people defend cheating or any other degenerate behavior with the excuse of intoxication and I will say it now. Being drunk does not make you a different fucking person. It does not change the thoughts in your head. What it does do is impair your ability to make decisions and judgement skills in general. It’s the same reason why people drive drunk. It’s routine. Its what they would normally do. And because they’re drunk, they can’t see any reason why they shouldn’t do that. Juliet gets drunk, she and Andy fight, she wants to hit him, and because she’s drunk she doesn’t think that she shouldn’t fucking put her hands on him. 2. She hit him in “self defense” and he broke her ribs.(There’s several points I have debunking this) first of all let’s get this out of the way, no one on that plane (including the very real witness who just so happened to be an adult film actress (I think?) who you so love to discount because of it) saw him strike her or even touch her at any time. Two, you are in fucking airplane seats sitting right the fuck next to each other with an armrest in between. It would be pretty fucking hard to break your ribs unless they were made of actual glass, or Andy’s real name is Bruce fucking banner. Bones are surprisingly strong and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that it’d be damn near impossible for him to do that to you, which brings me to three, if he had broken your ribs you would not be fucking standing up, thrashing around, whining like a little bitch, and oh by the way, continuing to abuse your husband for the second time on that flight. Four, you had a miscarriage. (When I was trying to conceive with my husband it was very difficult. I had two miscarriages before I finally had my son. I’m fully aware of how devastating having one is.) which is why if you are not lying (which I fully believe that Juliet would stoop that low just to get sympathy, especially with this big of a scandal. But I don’t actually have proof of this so I will say that it is just speculation on my part) I don’t fucking care. I am not unsympathetic to her if this did actually happen as I said, however, You do not get to make any excuse for putting your hands on another person out of anger. Ever. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what kind of stress you are under, I don’t care if you are inebriated in any way and I sure as hell don’t care what the fuck you have between your legs. You do not hurt anyone. Point blank period. Five. You are a woman, you can’t hurt him. This one, actually enrages me. We all know your crusty ass pulled this one out (and threw around trump supporters a few times for good measure) because you know damn well how society and the media views and deals with abusive women. Women can abuse. Women who are shorter or weaker than their target can abuse. The fact that there are people who either don’t know that or don’t agree with that is absolutely baffling. Six. The same (I believe) porn actress. Literally saw you beating your own face with the restraints you had to be put in (which by the way flight attendants only ever use restraints as an absolute last resort when someone becomes a danger to the others on board, so she had to be acting absolutely deranged) to give yourself a bloody nose to claim Andy hit you. Then you proceed to act like a child and tell Andy to call your fucking dad. (Which kinda proves that whole Scientology thing honestly) what in the hell. I stg as long as I am breathing I will never let this go. This is actual fucking domestic abuse. (Word limit TBC.) 3 / ? -🤠

A/N: yeah her hitting him "bc she was drunk" was never a good excuse not only for the reasons you mentioned but, also bc let's be real at no point are you ever going to get served enough alcohol on a plane to make you that drunk i don't care what anyone says. also when it comes to the excuse of him "breaking her ribs" does she forget that andy actually did break his ribs a while ago? i think she even visited him when he was recovering so she should know what kind of pain he was in. & if he actually broke her ribs, there's no way she would have even been able to stand bc i know andy sure wasn't able to. he said it was one of the most painful things he's experienced. (i don't think i need to comment on the rest of this. it would just be redundant. you hit the nail on the head with that.)

🤠 I don’t care if it happened just that one time ore more likely is an everyday occurrence. Abuse is abuse and should never be tolerated. Kind of getting away from the plane thing. Andy always seems, as it’s been said on here before, afraid to mess up. Like he might mess up, and make her mad. A common behavioral pattern in abuse victims. He also at this point and for a decent amount of time before, doesn’t seem like he loves her anymore. Like he keeps up appearances and pretends, but it’s like it’s a job he’s forced to do. He’s tired and burnt out but was probably manipulated into staying and juliet is probably clinging for dear life. Also I don’t know if I’m the only one who thinks this, but I swear, the veganism and sobering up was just a cover up, most likely formed by either Juliet herself or her fucked up family, after the plane incident to hide their tracks and regain some public favor (because you know, if you advocate for animal rights then you can’t abuse your husband 🙃) Andy never gave a shit before though. Even though it was unhealthy he loved to drink and smoke and was very outspoken about that. And he used to never give a fuck about eating meat or consuming animal products like leather. I mean they’re still selling leather goods ffs. I would get having minor fuck ups because you don’t know any better, but it’s fucking leather. And now Andy is unhealthy and miserable as ever, but the culprit is malnourishment and Juliet rather than cigs, alcohol, and Juliet. My final thoughts: I do definitely believe in the Scientology theory, but if not that than I definitely believe that Andy was and is being manipulated for his fame. On several occasions it really looked like they broke up, including the time when they did, and then said it was a joke. It really doesn’t feel normal. Also, Juliet doesn’t really care about Andy that much. She never wears her wedding ring, she sells all their shit, including sentimental items, and now that she’s gained more popularity from being with him, suddenly doesn’t want to put him in her bio or write him the same creepy ass paragraphs or anything. It’s fucked up how shes so keen to say she did it all herself when really she’s been riding dick for fame since before she even met Andy. It also always kinda seemed to me that Amy was kind of uncomfortable around Juliet. We all know that Chris loves to kiss her ass night and day (most likely to do with the Scientology thing “if” it’s true), but Juliet and Amy always seemed to have a weird relationship like it was tense and forced. Also I just want to mention the time that Juliet talked about screaming at the woman over what I believe was a game night and brushed it off as being competitive and no one gave damn. Fucked up. To finish off this already way too long little series, I think Andy is a very vulnerable insecure person who got manipulated by several people (not just Juliet) some of whom he probably really trusted, and they helped to get him in Juliet’s (equally if not more insecure) hands so she could hurt him as she pleases. I truly hope that even now both he, and his parents (even though Chris really grinds my gears) can get out of this whole shit show, relatively unscathed. I know this is probably pretty unlikely, but hope springs eternal I guess. As I said feel free to ask any questions you may have and I will try to answer them best I can. Thank you for reading. 4 / 4 -🤠

A/N: yet again you hit the nail on the head with this part so i don't need to comment too much. other than the fact that i do agree that juliet and amy's relationship does seem weird.

[tossawary]

Hey there! Just wanted to know if I could write fics based off your anon prompts? Bc some of them are pretty in-line with my idea of sqh, but I'm not sure who I should credit? Hope you don't mind clarifying, xoxo!

Ah, yeah, anon asks/prompts make it difficult to share credit around sometimes. Option 1 for me is asking the anon to come forward if they would like “credit” in the form of AO3 gift and if they don’t, to respect the fact that they might want their participation in fandom to stay anonymous. Option 2 is to just link to the ask or something if I feel like the interaction is worth mentioning. 

Credit sometimes feels like the wrong word here. Sometimes inspiration is more accurate, I think. If I write 250 words of a basic premise or make a tweet that just says, “What if Sha Hualing was 2 meters tall like MBJ?” and you write 10,000 words of actual fanfiction, it would be rude as hell (on my part) and also incorrect to say that I should get half the “credit” for your fic. Giving a shout-out for credit/inspiration is a fandom courtesy, not a necessary business contract. 

I don’t know how to phrase this, but you (speaking generally to everyone here, not just to you, Anon) don’t have to ask me permission to take over a basic premise? Or even a longer but still basic fic idea? I mean, if you completely took over a full and detailed outline of mine without asking permission first or giving any credit as a courtesy, I’d be very pissed off because I think that’s rude. Planning a fanfiction is work! 

But I’m not going to get in anyone’s face because they wrote a “moshang forced marriage au” or a fic in which “SQH works for Demon Emperor TLJ” without asking and receiving “my permission” (I am not the authority here and, though it’s besides the point, I’ll probably be delighted, tbh) even if they were directly inspired by my posts about it. I am not your Fandom Parent, you know? 

With basic premises, just go for it! This is fandom and no one really has “rights” to any fanfiction or fanart idea. I’ve had someone directly plagiarize my fanfiction before (including fic structure and direct dialogue including identical jokes) and honestly? I just let it go. It wasn’t worth my time to harass them over it. Plagiarizing work and being inspired (or having a case of convergent evolution) are super different things. I will, however, get in people’s faces with my feathers all fluffed if they decide to write one of my fic premises and then they come at me when I get around to making my own take on the fic premise too, or because they happened to have a similar fic idea independently and earlier. 

(Alternative interpretation of this ask: If this is about my prompt list of “A Guide to Troubled Birds” quotes, you definitely don’t have to credit me for that. I mean, you can say, “Thanks to Tossawary for making a SVSSS prompt list of ‘A Guide to Troubled Birds’ quotes! They go super well together!” But you really don’t have to do that. Like, they’re not mine.) 

If you feel like you want to share where your inspiration for a fanfiction came from, you can either Option A: give a shout-out in your Author’s Notes (“This is the interaction or post that inspired my fic!”) OR Option B: if you use AO3, you can use AO3′s “inspired by” feature and they’ll make the link for you, even if your inspiration is a random tumblr post or a tweet. 

Quick tutorial with simple HTML code and images below. 

OPTION A

Creating a link in your author’s notes on AO3 is really easy. Just write: 

<a href=“URL”>Text that will become a link.</a> 

Like: 

If you enjoyed my fic, come follow me on <a href=“https://tossawary.tumblr.com/”>Tumblr</a>! 

OPTION B

When creating or editing your work, find “This work is a remix, a translation, a podfic, or was inspired by another work.” and click the box. 

As AO3 will tell you, if you were inspired by another AO3 fic, all you need to do is give them the URL and they’ll fill out all the other categories. If you’re linking to a tumblr post or a tweet, you’ll need to fill these out yourself. 

Let’s say you were inspired by that anon with the Transmigrator Liu Mingyan concept. You’ll need the post or tweet URL. You’ll need to give it a title, probably “[Subject] Tumblr Post” or “[Subject] Tweet” will do, like “Transmigrator Liu Mingyan Tumblr Ask”. And you’ll need to name the people involved, which in this case is “Tossawary & Anonymous”. 

This will create something in your beginning Author’s Notes that says “Inspired by Transmigrator Liu Mingyan Tumblr Ask by Tossawary & Anonymous”. 

If you click that link, it will take you to a blurb that looks like this: 

If you click that link AGAIN, it will take you to the URL you submitted. 

Which could be the original tumblr post or original tweet, like so, or the tumblr post or tweet reblogged/retweeted to your own account. (There’s always a chance that the OP might delete the original post or tweet.) 

Hope that’s clear, Anon! Have fun! 

[bitch-in-a-bag]

can we talk about how the LGBT movement has changed in the past 15 years?

in the light of the events surrounding Chris chan, and people prioritizing pronouns over the rape of a woman with dementia, I think it displays just how... different things are.

i personally feel like it's been co-opted by the more loud and entitled mtfs/ males/penis-havers/whatever pc term exists for the XY chromosome'd, who go too far and aren't reasonably kept in check. I think terf no longer has meaning anymore because it's just become a word we use to silence anyone that disagrees with a trans woman. immediately you're going to call me a terf, I accept that, but please continue reading. I may suprise you. calling someone who's transgender a terf is kinda messed up anyway, and that's exactly why im writing this.

I also think that everyone else (allies, ftms, etc) have followed suit because they've written this messed up narrative that EvErYoNe iS VaLiD. except for trans penis-havers, bc they're the most oppressed and the most valid, actually, regardless of their experiences.

I never used to believe the above because it was always written off as terf shit, and ignoring it kinda benefitted me, but between seeing ftms getting bashed for refusing to follow new "TME" rules as if they aren't trans too, and seeing outrage around Chris chans pronouns, I think it's time to start saying things that may make people uncomfortable. innocent people are already getting hurt by this, and we need to do better. it's time to get uncomfortable.

I want to remind you that perception is both the relying factor, and also the downfall of newer lgbt theory. if my profile were mtf coded, maybe it currently is, you'd call me a self hating trans and I wouldn't be that big of a deal. terfs would probably target me.

if my profile was ftm coded, I would be absolutely skewered for daring to speak out about these issues, even though they do actually affect ftms disproportionately. terfs would try to convince me that being trans is a plague and a mental illness, and to just ~be a cis woman~!

and if assumed cis, I would 100% be assumed radfem terf, and everything I say would immediately be dismissed because of the genuine damage terfs have done. but terfs would still probably flock to this post and berate me for daring to validate trans people At All, because to them, being transgender is a mental illness akin to an eating disorder, and "giving in" to it is "self harm". clearly I don't believe that, so hopefully you'll give me at least some benefit of the doubt.

so, does my identity matter? i have a feeling you'll say yes, because it gives us a good idea of experiences I do and don't have expertise in, and thus room to talk about. but I refuse to directly identify what I actually am because I want the focus of any resulting conversation to be my message and not my self identification. if you read between the lines and figure it out that's just fine, but I would like to be heard first and foremost.

my profile is thus an attempt at being cis female coded, somewhat out of comfort, and that is likely what I'll be assumed to be due to the beliefs I am expressing, even though there is a substantial risk of getting misgendered and dismissed, no matter what my birth sex may actually be. i will give you a hint about my identity: I am transgender, on HRT and everything, and I have been personally affected by all of this. rest assured, this is well within my lane to speak about, and it does matter if you misgender me.

I want you to really think about that. before you respond, really think about if someone saying words on tumblr, talking about their OWN experiences and their take on recent history that applies to themself, really more worthy of being misgendered and harassed than... someone who said they transitioned so they could date lesbians, and then raped their own mother with dementia.

is that fair or just? or is this just a new way of letting people with penises do whatever they want? I personally think it's the latter. we need to hold people like Chris chan accountable without getting caught up on something as minor **in comparison** as misgendering and self identification. Is it sad and confusing that someone who self IDs as transgender became 1:1 with the most dangerous stereotypes that exist for trans women? Of course it is. But it doesn't mean that self identification is suddenly more important than a literal crime being committed.

I would normally dismiss it as a fluke or outright trolling if the evidence weren't so damning that this is in fact a real event that happened. If I hadn't seen this happen to other people, and if I didn't literally know another mtf person who used their dysphoria as an excuse for date rape on multiple occasions and never got any consequences for it.

It's not a one time thing, it's a developing problem that we need to stop before more people have their lives ruined. I can't even imagine how traumatizing and messed up it is for an FTM person to be date raped, by another transgender person no less. When I, an abuse survivor, told people of this MTFs red flags, people violently silenced me. People who didn't know I was trans called me a terf and transphobic. We, as a community, could've protected someone from getting date raped, and we didn't. Trans women can be awful, horrible fucking people, because they are people. Protecting them at all costs is wrong. Protecting them from transphobia is what we should be doing.

That being said, misgendering is still skeevy, and I haven't done anything like raped a disabled woman who is no longer able to consent, or date raped my own partner. if you give a shit about respecting my identity, please use they/them for me. if not, use visual perception and make assumptions that will most likely be incorrect, skew your own argument, and put me on the same level as a rapist, and arguably a fetishist. And I do need to remind you that calling someone transgender a rapist and a fetishist without evidence is still definitely classic transphobia, to the letter, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't do that.

as someone who is same sex attracted, I also want to bring this up as well.

in the US in the past 15 years, the movement as a whole pretty much went "YEAH BORN THIS WAY" with Lady Gaga, and then jumped ship to prioritize mostly mtfs at every angle. do mtfs need support? absolutely. but they don't need misguided toxic positivity, and that's what it's turned into.

it's gotten genuinely homophobic to the point where actually homosexual people are constantly being erased and demonized via "genital preferences are a fetish uwu", and vulva havers, especially the trans ones, are constantly being told to shut up about their experiences.

as much as you want to deny bioessentialism, its still very much well and alive with newer trans movement sentiments when we classify ftms as not worthy of speaking about their own issues with terms like "TME". it's also incredibly ignorant towards FTMs who pass, but dress feminine for comfort, and get mistaken for MTF, and treated like garbage because of it. They are not remotely exempt from misogyny, transphobia, or the intersection of the two, and it is not anyone's job to tell them they don't ever experience that when they do. Turning ftms and biological homosexuals into our enemies-- especially when the actual cause is transphobia and harmful gender stereotypes-- does nothing good or healthy for our movement.

Dont be mistaken, though, passing isn't the focus or end all be all here, it's the perception of others that ends up drastically effecting your experiences. There are words like misogyny that imply treatment via birth sex, however this too can be reliant on external perception. If an MTF individual either transitions very young, has an abundance of resources to transition, or just gets lucky and passes well, chances are she will experience a lot more misogyny than people may give credit to. inversely, someone who just started questioning yesterday, but lived as a male their whole life up until then, they genuinely cannot speak about misogyny with that much room because they simply haven't experienced it at an accurate enough angle or for enough time to understand it as a repeated and sociological force.

It works the other way as well, though; someone who's known that they're trans for a long time and haven't had the resources to transition, or do not or cannot pass in the eyes of society; these people suffer pain that we don't neccesarily have a word for yet, imo. It makes dysphoria worse and it makes living seem hopeless. And as a community, we deal with this is in a really messed up way by over-validating them instead of solving the core issue at hand. and people who suffer from this, but also acknowledge they can't claim what they haven't experienced, are left with nowhere to go.

And its important to acknowledge these things because they're integral to the over-encompassing trans experience. Instead of lying to everyone and telling everyone they pass/giving out unconditional positive regard, our focus should be making it so that it **doesn't matter if you pass**. that you're still worth respect and dignity if you're transgender, no matter what passing is or what it means to you, and no matter how you present. But also, if you do something awful, you still need to be held accountable, especially if you use yourself, your body, or your trans status to contribute to other axi of oppression.

Transphobia is a word that encompasses and addresses all of that, regardless of birth sex. "TME" shuts that down in favor of only letting MTF's speak. Which is still very bio-essentialist, and I can't help but feel like we've gone full circle.

Once upon a time you couldn't even get married if your partner had the same genitals as you. in the US, this was less than 7 years ago. and if you care about human rights activism, you know damn well that legal modification is not the end all be all. people who are genuinely homosexual are still oppressed, but the trans movement has started stepping on them to make ground we don't deserve. homosexuals are ok and valid. it's not a genital preference, and the prescence of trans people doesn't make conversion therapy sentiments ok, ever.

we've gone full circle, and it's not right.

[donnerpartyofone]

reasons my i am probably too sensitive to have anything to do with other people

including other people’s drama that has absolutely nothing to do with me

i started reading this person’s new webcomic on instagram a month or two ago, and what started out as a fun little time killer that i looked forward to every day has started making me so uncomfortable that i wish i’d never heard of it. it takes place right now, in an especially embattled US city, and it’s about the dysfunctional lives of a bunch of shallow millennials, set against the backdrop of an increasingly dangerous country in an unpredictable state of revolt. it’s solidly engaging, convincingly characterized, and rendered in a unique funny animal style; i wasn’t surprised to discover that it’s going to be published soon by the most reputable publisher of this sort of thing. at first, i was impressed by it because i thought the behavior and dialog of its insecure young people was so well observed. it felt like one of the only things of its kind that i’ve read, more or less about real people living right now, that was neither a broad ugly satire, nor a pretentious drama exaggerating the specialness of its characters. the other thing i liked about it was that while it was largely about their sex lives, it didn’t seem at all sexy to me. the artist has a kind of distorted, rough-hewn visual style that i thought put some emotional distance between the overheated state of the characters, and the real consequences of their decisions. then it all got weird.

the artist stuck a really long, graphic sex scene in the middle of story that made me think...oh, maybe i AM supposed to be getting off to this? that’s weird, this all seems really bad to me, like every character is just mindlessly, selfishly bent on destruction and not doing much to make me like them, and i’d been reading along thinking “god i’m SO GLAD i’m not in my 20s anymore and i don’t have to deal with people like this--or with the pressure to act like this, as if using sex to create drama and being ‘crazy’ is the ultimate thing a person can do with their life”--and then suddenly it felt like maybe the comic was actually some kind of celebration of this lifestyle, or at the very least it’s an intensely sentimental portrait of a time of life, and of types of people, that i cannot imagine feeling sentimental about. then something else happened that made the comic even MORE uncomfortable to read, somehow: it had been gaining traction at an amazing pace, with tons of people leaving comments to the tune of “noooo don’t do it!”, the way you would yell at someone in a horror movie not to go back for the cat, as each character made the worst possible personal choice in every daily installment. the “don’t go in there!” response seemed pretty natural to me, but then the artist stepped in and made this announcement threatening to stop doing the comic altogether if the readers wouldn’t stop criticizing the characters. pretty much everyone in the comments was like “???”. many apologized if their comments were offensive, although they had no idea what they could have said that was wrong; other people, who seemed more sure that they were the ones being accused, said that they thought you were SUPPOSED to feel critical of the characters’ obviously bad decisions. that was how i felt, and at that point i was just enormously glad that i never comment on shit online or get involved in any type of community shit, especially when the artist started explaining laboriously that all of the characters represent some facet of the artist themselves and so therefore none of them are meant to be seen in a bad light at all and they’re all meant to be loved unconditionally and if you find yourself thinking mean things about the characters then you are effectively shitting all over the artist as a person. a lot of readers fell all over themselves to be supportive, and i just thought...this isn’t something you should support, though. it sucks that the artist is feeling so sensitive, but they’re about to have a book out in the world where they won’t have any ability to threaten readers who are “reading it wrong” or having incorrect thoughts about it. i mean...life is full of uncomfortable experiences and people you can’t relate to, i really don’t think we should be promoting this hopeless sanitization of all experiences in which trigger warnings used to be something that protected traumatized people from being randomly confronted with traumatic material, and now they’re used to just make sure nobody ever has to hear anything they don’t like, ever. anyone who cares about this artist should be helping them understand that they cannot control how people read their book or how they feel about each character and story in it. or failing that, they should be encouraged to just turn off instagram comments. but because of all this drama, i found myself reading all the comments obsessively--something i did when the blowup first happened, because i couldn’t find anything in there that i thought was mean or offensive, which added to my uncomfortable fascination with the whole thing--and that’s when i spotted a comment where somebody asked the artist is this was a furry comic. i wish this didn’t blow my mind, but it kind of did. i mean, it’s a book where almost all the characters are animals, and they occasionally have a bunch of raunchy sex. i think that if you’re a furry, meaning you’re interested in that sort of thing, this book is completely available for you to enjoy however you want. but this person needed the artist to FORMALLY CATEGORIZE IT as a furry comic. what the fuck is the meaning of that? it struck me as something that people in fandoms do, where they need every single thing to be labeled to death in an intensive and intractable way like it was science, the Final Word on everything in the universe, and they like *argue with each other* about whether they’re *allowed* to ship certain characters together or imagine them doing specific things, which is something you would only worry about if you thought the topic represented a literal material reality that could be adversely affected by people’s improper thoughts. i mean imagine if you felt that way about your jerkoff fantasies about fictional characters? that your horny thoughts are up for debate by hundreds of people you don’t even know? imagine feeling like that about OTHER PEOPLE’S jerkoff fantasies, like it’s worth fighting over and trying to CONTROL? like holy fucking shit you guys, STOP IT. it would even be one thing to ask the artist if THEY were a furry, which may or may not be anybody’s business, but to ask whether interpreting the comic through a furry lens is ALLOWED is like...well, actually, maybe it’s exactly in line with the artist’s recently expressed attitude, that you’re forced to think of the book in exactly the way that they personally think about it, or else you should have your reading privileges revoked. so now i’m still reading the comic, sort of compulsively, because i’m a little addicted to the soap opera of it and i’m ALSO a little addicted to the soap opera of the artist battling the readers over finding the correct orthodoxy for reading the comic--there’s a particular guy i’ve become aware of in the comics community because he is always harassing people with this mix of really caustic sarcasm and really bitter political self-righteousness, and he was surely the main person who was being “mean” to the characters, and HE’S STILL DOING IT IN EXACTLY THE SAME WAY, because i guess the artist would rather have problems with people than simply block them and eliminate them from the equation? but the whole entire thing is making me so uncomfortable i can hardly stand it. reading about like, dumb hot chicks with no self-control, and smug young shitheads who use the veil of progressiveness to hide or justify their predatory sexual behavior, and grownass adults who start drama with 20 year olds in order to feel relevant, AND being forced to know that the artist intends for me to embrace and adore all of this bad shit--like, people and things i left behind in real life, because it was all bad!--with ultimate love and compassion, or else they reserve the right to claim that they’re being personally attacked, has just become too much to take. it’s starting to make me feel sick. i really need to take the reigns on this thing. as much as the artist needs to forget about this control fantasy and stop being so precious about what they’re doing, i need to stop subjecting myself to something i find painful, embarrassing, and frankly creepy, if i ever wanna get back to a state where i have less to complain about.

tl;dr: stupid hipster is too sensitive to read a webcomic by a stupid hipster who is too sensitive for anyone to read their webcomic.

[meta-squash]

Brick Club 1.5.13 “Solution of Some Questions of The Municipal Police”

Oh man. This one got long.

The spectacle continues. Fantine and Javert do not walk to the precinct alone; they’re followed by all the jeering spectators that were watching the fight. They are still yelling, laughing, genuinely finding amusement in Fantine’s humiliation. Fantine has returned to the mechanical lack of self she had before the fight. In the course of this chapter we’ll see her continuously oscillate between outbursts of presence and self-assertive distress, and moments of frightened distance and emotional shut-down.

“Curiosity is gluttony. To see is to devour.” Hugo keeps reiterating this. One of the worst things, aside from being an actual antagonist, aside from being an actual actor in the ruin of a person, is to be a bystander, a rubbernecker. There are no innocent bystanders, and by standing there, watching, finding glee and entertainment in the suffering of others, you are part of the problem. Curiosity is good, when it’s curiosity in pursuit of a solution or an answer in order to help someone. Curiosity is bad when the interest is purely voyeuristic. (I want to know why Hugo decided to use “to see” (voir) rather than “to watch” (regarder) in this sentence.)

Hugo’s discussion of the relationship between sex workers and cops is so sharp. The police have complete control over what happens to sex workers, who they choose to let go and who they bring in, how they are punished and for how long. I imagine, in cases that don’t include Javert, there’s a lot of “I won’t detain you if you sleep with me etc” type behavior from other cops. (Perhaps this is why Javert is so scary; he can’t be bribed or convinced and doesn’t use his status as leverage like that.) The police can “confiscate at will those two sad things they call their industry and their liberty.” This line just gets to me. The only thing people as poor as Fantine feel they have left is their way of making a living, and their freedom to be alive. Everything is else is on loan or in debt. And the cops can take those last two things at any moment. Not only that, but their industry and their liberty are both intrinsically connected to their bodies. Their industry isn’t something they can leave at the end of the day; they are always existing within the body that is also the main component of their livelihood.

I don’t know enough about legal proceedings of the era, but Javert is judge and jury here, condemning Fantine all by himself to six months in prison. On the other hand, Valjean (and Champmathieu) must go to court at Arras in order to be sentenced. Is this Hugo doing his Artistic Liberties handwavy thing, or could this have actually been done? It seems odd that some people could be sentenced by a random policeman and others have to go to court in front of a jury.

“It was one of those moments in which he exercised without restraint, but with all the scruples of a strict conscience, his formidable discretionary power.” Javert is extremely aware of his role in all of this. What’s fascinating to me about Javert is that he isn’t going around convicting people willy nilly, randomly making up crimes and things to fit a quota the way cops do in present day. With Fantine (and later, with Valjean, and even with the Thenardiers) he sits and he considers and he thinks about what he’s witnessed until he’s sure he’s seen a crime. The problem is, his morals and opinions are so rigid and unchanging that he could probably find crime almost anywhere, because he’s completely inflexible about what things are good or bad. Also, this arrest of Fantine is apparently a “great” (grande, as in big) thing, which I find interesting. Prostitution is essentially legal, so perhaps for him it’s a big thing because he finally has a reason to arrest someone whose legal profession he morally disagrees with? Or perhaps Fantine isn’t registered while most others are? Or maybe it’s big because it’s not just an arrest of a sex worker, but of a sex worker who has committed violence against a well-to-do gentleman? I don’t know.

“He was conducting a trial.” Nearly every time Hugo uses this phrase, when an individual character is conducting a trial of someone or something else, the resulting judgement is incorrect or too extreme. This happened with Valjean’s trial against religion, Javert is doing it here and will do it again at the end of the novel, Marius sort of does it to Valjean after the wedding. Each time a person’s worth is judged by a single person, the judgement falls short.

Fantine is terrified of prison, but part of her fear isn’t prison itself, but the wages. She’s more worried about the welfare of Cosette than herself. This makes sense to me. To her, prison itself probably doesn’t feel like it would be too much more miserable than her current state. The only increase in her misery would be her worry for Cosette and her inability to pay for her daughter’s care.

“Without getting to her feet, she dragged herself along the floor, dirtied by the muddy feet of all these men, clasping her hands, on her knees.” What an intense image. This is the condition of poor women: forced to beg for mercy from men who have power over them, while crawling through all the problems caused by those men’s uncaring and manipulative actions, dirtied by the utter lack of assistance from anyone with the actual power to help, and scoffed at when they clasp their hands and kiss the coattails of their oppressors.

Fantine’s monologue to Javert makes me so sad because she goes back and forth between “I did nothing wrong” and “maybe I was wrong to react the way I did,” when her reaction was so completely right. She asks, “Do they have the right to throw snow down our backs when we are going along quietly without harming anybody?” and I feel as though, in Javert’s eyes, they kind of do, because he disapproves of her profession in the first place. Fantine also brings up her illness here and in her other monologues, never as an excuse or even as an attempt to elicit pity, simply as an explanation. She also says “I wasn’t immodest with him, I didn’t speak with him. That was when he put the snow on me.” She literally tells Javert that she wasn’t trying to engage with Bamatabois in any way, that she was completely ignoring him even as he tried to incite her. The last chapter doesn’t mention how long he was mocking her for, only that her pacing brought her back to his spot “every five minutes,” which means he must have been out there harassing her for quite some time before he shoved snow down her back and she snapped. And yet, here she talks herself in a circle, suddenly turning around and saying “Perhaps I was wrong to get mad.” It’s just so sad that she’s completely in the right and yet she doubts even that.

And Javert doesn’t hear a word of her explanation or her pleas. She realizes this, and instead tries to use Cosette. But this isn’t her using Cosette to save herself, this is using Cosette to save Cosette. She realizes that if she goes to prison she won’t be able to pay for Cosette. She tries to use her “poor starved child,” tries to ask for pity for Cosette. If Javert won’t pity her, a sex worker, maybe he’ll pity her as the mother of a little girl. But considering Javert’s childhood, he probably sees Cosette as equally as bad as her mother, because she’s the child of a prostitute, born out of wedlock, living in poverty with some random innkeepers two hundred miles away.

“I’m not a bad woman at heart. It’s not laziness and greed that have brought me to this; I’ve drunk brandy but it was from misery.” God, this line. I don’t even know who would think something like greed or laziness (but especially greed) could bring someone into this line of work. Maybe if she was, like, a well-known professional sex worker in a Paris brothel she could make good money, but as a random woman walking the streets in a garrisoned town? She clearly makes practically nothing. And poverty like this isn’t lazy at all. Every second not spent sleeping is spent trying to make money, worrying about being able to pay rent or debts or to find food or some way to keep warm or whatever. I hate that even today people still think poverty comes from laziness.

“Great grief is a divine and terrible thing that transfigures the wretched. At that instant Fantine had again become beautiful.” I don’t really know what to do with this line. It feels like a weird fetishization of poverty and suffering?

“She would have softened a heart of granite; but you cannot soften a heart of wood.” Why can’t you soften a heart of wood? Because wood only rots when it gets soft. I do find it interesting that Hugo calls Javert’s heart wooden, but uses statue imagery for him for the rest of the chapter.

Javert declaring that "The Eternal Father in person couldn’t help you now” is a heavy line. The law is above even god here. If god appeared right now and told him to free Fantine, Javert is saying he wouldn’t do it. A page later we see him reluctantly stand down to Valjean, which negates this statement, but it’s interesting that at this instant, he says wouldn’t even be moved to mercy by god. And it’s true, he’s not moved to mercy, ever. At no point is it ever his decision to let Fantine go. He does not bow to pleas for mercy, but he will bow to authority, even if he questioned it a moment before.

Valjean enters without being noticed and watches the exchange. I feel like this is a weird reversal of Hugo’s “to see is to devour” from earlier in the chapter. Valjean is watching, but not out of voyeuristic curiosity. He intends to actually act, to do something about what has happened and help someone who needs help.

Throughout the last few chapters, Fantine has grown rougher with each loss. Her speech and personality has changed, she drinks, she is louder, less polite, and more childish. She’s lost her “modesty” and with that any pretense. There’s no more masking. She’s not trying to fit in, because that’s not happening anymore.

Somehow I’ve glossed over this line each time I’ve read the book, but when Fantine spits in Madeleine’s face, Hugo seems to imply that it reminds Javert of his suspicions re: Madeleine’s true identity. Javert sees this action and makes the connection between convict-Valjean and Fantine, and instead of seeing the sacrilege of a prostitute spitting on a mayor, for a moment he sees an interaction between two outlaws of society: a convict and a prostitute.

I’ve noticed that Fantine talks to herself in reaction to being freed in the same way that Valjean talked to himself when Myriel was first kind to him/when the bishop told the gendarmes to set him free, and the same way Eponine talks to herself. There’s a marked difference between moments when characters “talk to themselves” but it’s obvious that it’s a narrative mechanic of them thinking in their heads, and when they actually talk to themselves while other people are present. For Fantine and Valjean, it’s in moments when they are in great emotional shock/distress that they speak aloud to themselves while other people are present. (I’m not sure what to make of that in terms of Eponine, who always seems to be speaking mostly to herself.)

Fantine starts out this monologue talking to herself, but then she turns it into talking to Javert. It’s interesting that her utter rejection of Valjean means that she’s actually turning to Javert to speak, despite being absolutely terrified of him only moments ago.

Fantine announces that she’s not afraid of Valjean. Of course she’s not; in her eyes he’s done everything to her that he can. He has caused all her suffering and doesn’t have the power to cause anything more. She’s still afraid of Javert because he still has the power to hurt and ruin her. He can fine her or send her to prison, and condemn her for as long as he likes. She doesn’t know anything about Valjean, except that she assumes he doesn’t care. What she knows about Javert is that he does care, only that care is on the side of punishment, not one of mercy. It’s interesting then that she continues to try and appeal to his better nature (one which he does not possess) or to his pity (which he also does not possess). She also continues to try and convince herself that it is Javert who has decided to let her go, not Madeleine. It’s almost as though she thinks that if she can convince herself that he’s the one letting her go, she can also convince him to actually do it.

Fantine’s monologues keep coming back to wages. She specifically criticizes the way that the prison contractors do wrong to poor people by paying them so little for so much labor. Her discussion of her own expenses is also still applicable to modern day. She still owes money to the Thenardiers, but she’s up to date on her rent. This is still the experience of the poor: you deal with more immediate expenses first, and debts come second, even as they continue to rack up.

Both Fantine and Javert are thrown off balance by Madeleine’s declaration. Fantine spends her entire monologue before attempting to leave trying convince herself that it is Javert that has let her go. It is only when she hears Madeleine confirm that he was the one who declared it that she is thrown off-kilter, having to reconcile her opinion of Madeleine with his (perceived) actions. Javert is thrown by someone in an authority position acting the way that Madeleine is; this is the first time we see him actually question authority and refuse to act on an order.

“...that order, law, morality, government, society itself, were personified in him, Javert?” This is the only time, I think, where Hugo implies that a character is consciously becoming a Symbol. The fact that Hugo even suggests the potential for Javert to see himself as the embodiment of law, morality, society, etc is unique, because no other character sees themselves as the embodiment of such big concepts. The closest might be Valjean seeing himself as a Bad Person Forever, but even that is a much smaller concept, in that Valjean is looking at his past self, not at himself as the entire concept of Criminals Everywhere. But Hugo only gives two choices when it comes to Javert: either he is questioning authority for the first time in his life, or he is consciously becoming a Symbol. It turns out to be the former, but both of these things are really extremely significant.To become a conscious symbol, or even to have the potential of becoming a conscious symbol, is a unique level of conceptual engagement for a character, almost like starting to break the fourth wall. And questioning authority is a First for Javert here, significant because it starts the ball rolling and he continues to question Madeleine’s authority from here on out, even if it’s only to himself and not to his face.

“The insult does not belong to him, but to justice.” Okay so Hapgood translates this line a little differently, but WOW I love this FMA version a lot. Just the idea that something as small as an insult doesn’t even get to belong to the person it was directed at, but instead can be entirely claimed by the law. Now, I know that this line is supposed to mean that Fantine’s insult to Madeleine was by default also an insult to justice due to Madeleine’s authority position, but I always read it as the law taking this insult for its own use. Like, “This societal outcast insulted someone, so now we can arrest her, because any sort of social indiscretion from someone like that belongs to the law” or “this insult, because it was made in the presence of police by someone in custody, now belongs to the law rather than her or her target.” (It also reminds me of modern day cops, who arrest or threaten to arrest people simply for hurting their little baby feelings despite doing nothing illegal.)

Fantine goes through a parallel struggle to Valjean here. The man she hated so much (Madeleine) was her savior, just as the religion Valjean doubted and hated had been his. I mean, literally they have the same “two paths, one of light and one of darkness” symbolism, the same angel/demon symbolism, the same conflict about whether or not they must change their whole soul and beliefs, the same absolute terror, and then the final feeling of hope and gratitude. She kneels in front of Valjean the same way Valjean knelt in front of Myriel’s door.

This is also the first time we see Valjean’s benevolence in speech, action, and monetary terms. He rescued Fauchelevent, but we don’t seem him speak to Fauchelevent after that despite the purchase of his horse and cart and getting him a new job. We never see him speak to anyone else that he helps, especially since his usual mode is Reverse Robbery (thank you Mellow for that term btw) rather than in-person benevolence. But we do get him not only rescuing Fantine from prison, but speaking to her, offering her monetary help, offering her pretty much any assistance towards happiness. I wonder if the difference between Valjean’s interaction here with Fantine, and his interaction with Fauchelevent or any other person he gives money to or helps, is that this is the first instance that he feels guilty or personally responsible. Every other act of charity, including Fauchelevent is just that, selfless charity just because. But this, Fantine, is Valjean righting a wrong that has been done. Even though it was without his knowledge, he still seems to feel responsible.

Once again, we have a moment of hope for Fantine that is immediately dashed. Fantine is free, she’s going to get her daughter back, she can leave her miserable life for something better, her debts will be paid, she can be happy. Only she faints, and she spends the rest of her time in hospital until her death.

[suzyundertale]

Non-binary characters in Undertale and Deltarune

A lot of people don’t notice this, but there are several major characters in Undertale that are referred to exclusively with they/them pronouns. In this post, I’ll go over them, and I’ll explain why so many non-binary people identify with them.

Napstablook and Monster Kid

Both Napstablook and Monster Kid are referred to only with they/them pronouns. This suggests that they are non-binary.

Of course, even with characters being exclusively referred to with they/them, there will be people who say it’s intentionally “ambiguous”, or an oversight, or what have you.

Fortunately, we have definitive evidence this isn’t the case.

In the first printing of the official Undertale art book, featuring commentary from Toby Fox himself, these two characters were mistakenly referred to with he/him pronouns.

However, when this was pointed out to Toby, he told me that it was a typo and it would be fixed in the next run - which it promptly was.

This serves as confirmation that referring to these two with he/him pronouns is incorrect, and they/them are the correct pronouns.

Frisk

Frisk is the protagonist and player character of Undertale. It’s worth noting that, for the majority of Undertale, you’re definitely supposed to think that Frisk is a player self-insert character, a blank slate for you to project yourself onto. You’re tricked into thinking you name them, and they have an ambiguous skin color and gender.

However, in the True Pacifist ending, it’s revealed that they have their own name: Frisk.

This reveal also serves as a reveal that Frisk isn’t you, or an in-game representation of you. They’re their own person. They’re a character that exists within this universe. It’s always been just them. Not you or anyone else.

I mean, why would a character who’s meant to be “you” have their own name? Toby never calls Frisk “Frisk” in merchandise or interviews, simply calling them “The Human”, because their name is a major spoiler for the True Pacifist ending. It’s quite easy to only call them “The Human”, he has no trouble doing it now, so if they’re meant to be “you”, there’s no reason to give them a name at all.

In the True Pacifist ending, after Asriel returns everyone’s SOULs, everyone magically learns Frisk’s name (except Napstablook, who closed their blinds upon seeing the flash of light.) Suddenly, everyone knows who Frisk is.

And… all of their friends still use they/them pronouns for them.

If they’re clearly meant to be not you, then surely it would be easier for Toby to hammer in that point by suddenly having everyone refer to Frisk with different pronouns. But he doesn’t, because Frisk isn’t a girl or a boy. Because the monsters were never wrong to use they/them for Frisk. Those were always their pronouns, and they still are.

Chara

Chara is the character we name at the beginning of Undertale. However, this doesn’t mean that they literally are you.

Chara has their own backstory - they had a family, they had likes and dislikes. They’re not meant to be an in-game representation of the player. If they were, there’s about a million better ways Toby could have done that. Like, you know, not giving them a clearly defined backstory and personality. Why would someone who’s supposed to be “the player” be so… different from so many people? A lot of people don’t like chocolate or flowers or knives. Actually, I’d guess that most people don’t like all of those things at once. But Chara does.

In any case, Chara is referred to exclusively with they/them or, occasionally, it/its pronouns. Their own brother, Asriel - their best friend and undoubtedly the person they were closest to -  uses only they/them pronouns when speaking of them.

Kris

From the very beginning of Deltarune, it’s made very clear that Kris is NOT a self-insert of any kind, even more clear than Frisk and Chara. Whether you believe the red SOUL is literally the player or not, Kris is clearly their own person fighting against someone for control of their body. They have their own clearly defined personality, likes and dislikes, etc. I really don’t think there’s any way to reasonably argue that Kris is meant to be a representation of the player. You don’t get to choose anything about them. Their personality, their likes and dislikes, their hobbies, their past, all of that is set in stone.

So why, then, would their gender be up to player interpretation? Why would that be the one single thing we get to decide about Kris? It, quite simply, does not make any sense.

Seam

Seam is a lot less obvious than the other ones - but if you play through Deltarune, you might notice something about all the dialogue where people refer to Seam.

Seam is never referred to with any pronouns. The way it’s written seems very deliberate, in my opinion, so I don’t think that this is a coincidence. 

In the real world, some non-binary people elect to use no pronouns, as well, and ask to be only referred to by name. Seam may be representation for this. Honestly, I think it’s really great of Toby to include a character that doesn’t use pronouns. All the other non-binary characters in Undertale and Deltarune use they/them, but that’s not always the case for real non-binary people. In real life, non-binary people can use all sorts of pronouns, or no pronouns at all.

At first it may seem confusing or difficult to not use any pronouns to refer to someone. But if you reread this section, you’ll notice I’ve never used any third-person pronouns. It took a bit of thinking, but it’s actually quite easy once you get used to it!

--

Kris, Frisk, and Chara are never explicitly stated to be non-binary. That’s true. Some people make the argument that because it’s never explicitly stated, it can’t be canon. That is not true at all. To demonstrate this, I will use an example from Undertale.

Take Alphys. From the Mettaton Quiz Show segment of Undertale, we can learn that Alphys has a crush on both Undyne, a woman, and Asgore, a man. Therefore, Alphys is canonically bisexual. Alphys herself never states that she is bisexual. No one else ever says that Alphys is bisexual. In fact, the word “bisexual” is never used once in Undertale at all. But Alphys being bisexual is still canon.

Therefore, it’s possible for Kris, Frisk, and Chara to be canonically non-binary without it ever being outright stated.

But why? Wouldn’t it be easier for Toby to explicitly state it? Sure, maybe it would be easier to write - but that doesn’t mean it’s better writing. Finding a way to somehow mention a character’s gender would most likely come across as forced and unnatural. After all, most people don’t openly discuss their gender or sexuality in everyday situations.

So, Kris doesn’t need to explicitly say “I’m non-binary and use they/them pronouns” to be a character who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. They just… are. The same goes, of course, for Frisk and Chara.

They’re only ever referred to with they/them pronouns by close friends and family, and we’re given no reason to believe they’re anything other than non-binary. There’s absolutely no reason to use any pronouns other than they/them for these characters.

If you meet someone in real life, and notice that everyone around you is only using they/them pronouns for that person… well, it’s pretty safe to assume that person is non-binary. Even if you never hear anyone say “This Person Is Non-binary”, you don’t have an excuse to start calling them a he or a she. It’s the same with the kids.

The fact is that Frisk and Kris are no different than other video game protagonists. No one tries to argue that Ninten or Ness or Lucas are girls. No one tries to argue that Samus is a boy. It’s only when the protagonist is non-binary that people try to argue otherwise.

Why?

Some people may ask, well, why is this important? Why can’t I just headcanon them as whatever I want? They’re not even real!

Well, you see, non-binary characters are really rare in fiction. Especially as a protagonist, and especially a human protagonist. When you see a non-binary or genderless character in fiction, it’s usually going to be something non-human, like an alien, or otherwise non-sentient, like a robot. This happens a lot, and it dehumanizes actual non-binary people. Even worse, transgender characters in fiction in general are often treated like jokes, or something to make fun of. Like they’re not even a person.

So, to a non-binary person, to see a non-binary protagonist who’s a human being, like them, is.. very important. It’s something you might not understand if you’ve grown up seeing people like yourself on TV or in games or books all the time. It brings comfort to non-binary people to see someone like themself in such a popular video game. It gives them reassurance that “yes, we do exist”, as many people in the real world deny the existence of non-binary people. In both Undertale and Deltarune, no one makes a big deal of Frisk or Chara or Kris being non-binary. No one ever challenges it. No one ever misgenders them. And that’s incredibly comforting for so many non-binary people. For once, for once, they can be immersed in a world where people like them are unanimously accepted, and treated with respect.

That’s why so many non-binary people feel hurt when they see people in fandom misgendering the kids, as well. It’s a denial of their identities, it’s a denial that non-binary people exist in the Undertale and Deltarune universes. Even though it’s just a fictional character, it can still impact your view of actual non-binary people - if you can’t even respect a fictional character’s pronouns, what does that say about how you treat real people?

In addition, a lot of trans and non-binary people in the Undertale fandom are harassed over this. When they try to defend Kris, Frisk, and Chara’s pronouns, people will inevitably throw hate at them. People who identify with these characters are met with mockery and hostility. Unfortunately, there are transphobic people in the Undertale fandom. Misgendering the kids validates those people. It tells those people, “even if someone uses only they/them pronouns, it’s okay to call them a he or a she.” It tells them, “you’re right to think these people are unreasonable. you’re right to think these people don’t exist.” And that’s wrong. That’s not true at all.

[killian-whump]

(I wanna preface this with a trigger warning for mentions of rape) Hey, I was scrolling through my twitter feed and saw some people being nasty about season 7 (and the cast) but something that stood out to me was the fact that there's a couple of people who are accusing Wish!Hook/Rogers of being a r*pist and accusing him of admitting to it. I'm currently rewatching s7 and was wondering if there was something I missed, either explicitly or implicitly stated 😅

OH MY GOD, ARE YOU SERIOUS?!

Are these people STILL going on about that shit???

I’m going to fucking rant about this for a bit, so hit the jump. Or don’t.

Okay, refresher for Nonny and those who are new to this ShitShow:

A bunch of people decided to opt out of S7, because Emma Swan was no longer going to be on the show. Now, not watching a show after your fave character/actor leaves it is absolutely understandable. There’s nothing wrong with it. However, hate-watching that show, campaigning for it to be cancelled, attacking the actors, writers, show-runners and crew who are continuing to work on that show or join the show after your fave’s departure... That’s all completely shitty (and absolutely batshit CRAZY) behavior. There is NO excuse for it. Ever.

And that segment of batshit crazy assholes is who we’re talking about here.

Now, most of these motherfuckers haven’t even watched S7. They base their crazy-ass opinions on synopses of the episodes, and heresay from their similarly sanity-impaired friends. So most of the time, it’s useless to counter their rantings with facts and canon interpretations. They’ll simply repeat, “Well, my friend Janet said it, and I believe her.” or some other nonsense.

So. With all of that in mind, Episode 2 of Season 7 re-introduced Wish Hook to viewers and revealed that he was Detective Rogers, set up Emma as his “savior” as a respectful nod to the idea of every Hook being “destined” to be saved by Emma Swan, and also established his primary and singular drive as a character - reuniting with his daughter. THOSE were the main points of the episode.

However, the fuckwits I spoke about above decided to focus, not on any of the important aspects of the episode, but on his cockamamie plot to score a True Love’s Kiss from Emma in order to cure his poisoned heart. The plot entailed using magic to de-age himself, returning to Storybrooke with Regina, getting a kiss from Emma to cure said heart, then returning to his own Enchanted Forest to reunite with Alice. It is this last part that the nutters refuse to believe. They prefer to believe that Hook intended to stay in Storybrooke, take over OG Hook’s entire life, and in so doing - engage in sex with Emma under the pretense that he is “her” Killian. And that is where the rape claim comes in.

Now, for those of us who actually watched the show, it’s painfully (and embarrassingly, for those nutters) obvious that Wish Hook would never have stayed in Storybrooke for even a second longer than necessary after curing his heart (or finding that his plot didn’t work). His entire impetus as a character was to reunite with Alice, his daughter. Remaining in Storybrooke, a realm far away from where his daughter even IS, and maintaining the charade of being someone else, someone without said daughter, and bothering to keep up that pretense... doesn’t suit his character’s main goals whatsoever. It’s ludicrous to think he would. It’s literally insane and one has to be awfully dedicated to besmirching the show and the character to even maintain it.

And yet, they do. Their ONE “ace in the hole” is that they managed to get one of the writers (Adam Horowitz, I believe) to answer a question about what Wish Hook intended to do with his plan with an admission that Wish Hook intended to take over Hook’s life. Now, I’m gonna come right out and say it: That answer, regardless of who it came from, also doesn’t fit the narrative of S7 or Wish Hook’s main drives as a character. And I’m also gonna say that sometimes even the people who should know best about a show don’t... and also, sometimes people mis-speak or are trying to emphasize one thing (in this case, how “bad” Hook was going to be to get what he wanted, and how “in need” he was of Emma’s saving him and setting him right) instead of the more important thing (that these fuckers had no interest in Wish Hook’s redemption and only wanted to bait Adam into saying something they could use as “proof” of their claims).

But regardless, it’s the ONE thing they have to “back up” their insanity, and they use the fuck out of it. Mind you, these same people will summarily throw out any and all claims that there wasn’t rape involved or intended there as factually incorrect, regardless of where they come from. Instead, they will simply trot out that ONE well-worn screencap yet again and insist, as always, that they are right and Everyone Else is wrong.

So... Long story short, it’s absolute apeshit, and the people who argue it’s true are so asinine and obsessive that they’re not worth arguing with. You can’t change their minds or make them see sense, because they desperately want to cling to their belief that S7 Is Bad and Wish Hook Is Bad and that they were/are right to boycott, campaign against the show, and attack those who took part in creating it, because it is clearly Bad and does Bad Things. This is also the entire basis of their claims that Wish Hook, Rogers, and S7 itself are “triggering” to them and deeply disturbing. They use this claim to try to essentially erase S7 from existence by complaining whenever the S7 exclusive actors are involved in “Once” events, or whenever S7+ actors refer to S7 events or Wish Hook, himself. Colin has even been directly accused by these assholes of “approving” of rape and being “insensitive” to his fans by wearing clothing he got from Rogers’ wardrobe to conventions. It’s absolutely batshit, toxic, and rude.

I suspect this is all rearing its ugly head yet again because Jen is scheduled to appear at Enchanted 3, and some of these crazies (who are all Jen fans, incidentally) are already trying to get Starfury to not invite anyone who exclusively starred in S7. Which, considering the only other announced star is Tiera Skovbye, I sincerely wish them all the luck in the world with XD But regardless, the SANE fans are all pretty much telling them, “Hey, what? That’s rude? Why are you being a dick?” and I’m assuming the jerks quickly resorted to “but rape is bad!” arguments to derail all the legit complaints about their shitty-ass behavior.

SO! My advice to you, Nonny, and to everyone else... is to mute those assholes and not engage with them in any way, shape or form. Like the comments of those poor fools who try, because their hearts are in the right place, even if their brains are doomed to be scrambled by the illogical reaches they’re about to be subjected to. It’s good to show support for the sensible people in our fandom(s). But I don’t recommend actually engaging with them, yourself. They’re hateful, toxic people... and your entire life will be better off for steering clear of them. Also, there’s only about 10-20 of them in their entirety, so once you weed them out and mute them, it’s like they don’t even exist.

And, hopefully, if they’re ignored by enough people for a long enough time, they’ll move on to something else. I guess that hasn’t happened yet, but here’s hoping it happens eventually. If not for our sake, then for Jen’s. I can’t imagine getting a reputation for having fans who literally harass and stalk her co-stars, employers and even people who simply continue to work on a project after she voluntarily leaves it will actually help her career at all.

Don’t get me wrong here, working with Jen on Once was a huge step up for Colin’s career... but the crazies in her fandom are literally following him into his next projects, naysaying them, criticizing and insulting him, attacking his fans for supporting him and his projects, and insisting that nothing Colin does will ever be as good as the work he did with Jen... and that’s just fucking NUTS. And it’s not limited to Colin. Remember the fervor when Josh Dallas dared to call another actress his “Tv Daughter”? Yeah, that was charming. If this keeps up, it won’t be long before Jen’s earning herself a reputation for being “lovely to work with, but comes with a cloud of toxic fans who will make her co-stars sorry they worked with her for YEARS afterwards.” And, I mean, color me weird if you want to, but I think that’s generally NOT a good plan.

[hxyxdydydyyddudw2g]

I hate that this post needed to be peppered with disgusting ableist rhetoric founded by the Nazis, and perpetuated by scientific positivism and psychoanalytic epistemology. that is still being used against women and POC, especially people who are criminalized (as the institutions of social sciences were initialized to detect and punish 'deviants' in society and reinforce imperialism against the colonially-conquered 'other').

"Neurological racism" and "mental disease" are absolutely just sickening ways to talk about anything. Neurodivergency is not a disease. There is nothing 'neurological' about racism - just like your behavior is entirely socially trained. Trying to find the most 'evil possible person's, or the 'dumbest' scenario, is just a problem of people's awful attempts to find scapegoats in 'biology and 'genes' to avoid dealing with real problems.

And if we're even pretending that anyone on this post sees disabled people as up as the barest minimum might demand, it's ASPD. 'Sociopathy', 'psychopaths', etc, are bullshit fetishist nonsense even more than the biased and arbitrary DSM, or the horrific culture of diagnostic that people in power use to stereotype a source of 'degeneracy' they see in society. Both those terms target criminals in an attempt to dehumanize them... especially black men. It justifies the injustice of the whole system if the people aren't people. Also, to any ASPD people who had to suffer the above poster, I hope you have a nice day, you do not deserve that.

Second, there's always an obvious tell to ablesim being equated to total unreasonable and senseless, which also has its roots in Freudian and Lacanian sexism: it's separate from everything else. It's the literal exception to being human. Everyone else has a reason founded on bad logic, as opposed *them*. And per usual, it's just tagged on (not even a common quote, probably because there isn't one lmao), even though the essential relationship here is that people abuse their "allyship", relationships in a larger marginalized community, online communities, etc. It's talking about a specific thread of behavior and fetishism/appropriation/mockery of black culture. When your identity is turned into a game of making you out to be a horrific fucking monster or not even worth speaking to, and that people are supposed to diagnose you with their made up immature eugenicist fanfic version of your life to have an excuse to harass and abuse you... or any of the other ways of being separated out from a community... you probably don't GET the opportunity, and the above poster perfectly clarifies why. In what world have any communities EVER been wholly supported of ALL imprisoned people in any institution, remembered the schizophrenic and other ND's who laid the foundations for queer rights and theory? Not in decades.

And so we come around to the "excuses". Considering the underlying rhetoric at play in this thread, it implies the same old thing, almost the reverse of what OP is trying to say. Unlike the other 3, social ignorance and hatred and bigotry and stupidity and evil IS actually said to be some kind of symptom, as something you will do and were born to do, instead of ontology. The responder just makes that reality all the more obvious, and the fact that tumblr is still home to posts like 'we should genocide all the narcissists, who is with me!' And no one blinks an eye. No one else said anything to the above poster either. The fact is that people are eager to keep your 'disease' at fault. And more importantly, to make subtle jabs at the presumed intelligence and social ability of the group they are talking about: that is why, I believe, OP didn't use a quote. They're treating our 'incorrect behavior' as a symptom instead of an act or a word - our 'lesser ability' and stupidity should be kept in line. As if any ND person who has to live the worst of these consequences would ever make this relation - you can't NOT be aware of the implications. A pathology is literally a problematic label placed on people's way of behaving all the time.

(Note to everyone with adhd/autism/depression & and anxiety/etc. who wants to respond, ND includes more than just the most privileged, common, and socially accepted pathologies which get all the positive attention. You guys are usually responsible for spreading these kinds of attitudes into larger communities to separate yourself from 'the bad ones', without realizing that many 'evil disorders' are actually just the NT negative interpretation of you. Npd vs adhd and aspd and bpd vs autism make this pretty clear.)

Reminder that it really doesn’t matter what ways you’re marginalized, if you’re not black you’re just as capable of anti blackness as white cishet people. No amount of “but I’m gay!”, “but I’m trans!”, or “but I’m not white!” changes that.

And being neurodiverse/disabled isn’t an excuse for anti blackness either.

[cjill77-blog]

Worst Night of My Life

Me Against Them: Surviving Police Bullying

I have the deepest regrets of ever putting myself in the position to have to write a letter like this.  I'm writing about a horrific incident that occurred to me with a heavy heart and soul. I pray to God that no one will ever have to go through what I have endured and I am sure many before me have already, because honestly who wants to stand up alone against a city administration, a city prosecutor and an entire police department in the town they live in. I Do.

My name is Cara Ledezma a 41 year old single mom with almost 16 year old and we live in  Grain Valley, Missouri. Today I’m going to share a dark and horrific incident, not at the hands of some criminals but at the hands of Police. Yes, the POLICE who is sworn to protect the laws, the innocent, their property who actually turned out to be the real culprits.

This all happened back in 2017, when I was stopped by a police officer at 408 Main Street, my home address at the time. He suspected something criminal from a far distance(or at least a story the police were told) and because I didn't have my license at that time he decided to call for a drug dog to search my car without any probable cause that too when he had plenty of backup because several more police cars were in my driveway seconds after I pulled into my driveway only driving one city block. The sniffer went on to search my car but found nothing and then the officer went on to search my personal belongings he went on to search my purse which he had no right nor the cause too and then he decided to book me for possession of small amounts of prescription drug that belonged to my mother, by calling it "Possession of Drugs". This farce didn't stop or that his companion officers or the other officer with the sniffer from BSPD, he picks up the jewelry from my purse and the TV from the back seat of my car and referred them to be stolen from a burglary at Cypress Street from a month prior. Since then I’ve mentally so disturbed by all this, thousands in court fines and fees, attorney fees and not to mention my vehicle and all of the possessions in my vehicle. I have had countless sleepless nights over it and been depressed at certain times thinking about it, thinking about the time it happened, how it happened or how it all got started. Now I have decided that I will not share a shred of  my tears or my invaluable time thinking about how it happened. How it got started but on the contrary, now the only thing I care about is how it’s going to end, for good. I have decided that my daughter and I have suffered enough from something that we had nothing to do with and now it's time to put this horrible chapter of our life to bed. So that’s why I’ve decided to share my story with all of you so you could all know what I have suffered.

Since then, for 2 years I've dedicated myself that I will get to the bottom of this and will prove my innocence to everyone, since then I've been Dissecting the police reports and have been finding inaccuracies and discrepancies in them and have been finding facts to counter their outrageous lies.

The witness they presented against my name is a convicted felon with a record of Enticement of a Child(Actor 21 Years old or older and children less than 15 years of age), such felon is not being regarded and treated as a felon and a threat to the community, but instead his words are taken as biblical against a longtime resident of Grain Valley, against a single mom in college with a teenage daughter at GVHS, a women with ties to the community and family with business in Grain Valley. A felon’s words against someone who graduated GVHS, who spent most of her life in what I believed was beautiful community without any record of wrongdoing. I can say that I endured nothing but sheer humiliation at the hands of GVPD.

I can’t even begin to contemplate of what I had to go through, and since this, I've devoted myself to find the truth. So to begin I acquired the police report of the incident which was a complete fabrication of the truth. For a start, that why I’m calling it fabricated report because it involved no video of the whole incident, I couldn’t get a single shred of video evidence that could prove them right and me wrong, not from the inside of police station or from outside or from any of the police officers who were involved in this incident, not from ONE. There were three police patrols were involved and still there was no footage from any single one of them, with more than $100,000.00 of taxpayer money spent and still, they couldn't produce a video, I wonder what that money was spent on? So, I decided to go through the court, to obtain the video evidence,  I asked my attorney (Dave Halpin) to get the motion to file only to be told first by police a motion only to find out that the GVPD had no video evidence of that night. Period.

Then I decided to head towards BSPD since my car was searched by Officer Bates who was from BSPD. It is worth noting that the sniffer found nothing when he sniffed my car, it was only then they decided to search my belongings and my car which they had no right to do as I said earlier, and as according to the law “A police officer can only search your vehicle if he has probable cause" which they didn't have. That is where the police overstepped and abused their power by violating my fundamental right, that they humiliated me even when I told them that I was bleeding all the way through my legs cause of menstrual bleeding, I requested them to let me get some feminine products to clean myself up as I was being held in my driveway in front of all the officers and anyone who was driving by. After about an hour of being humiliated, mocked and completely feeling like I was being tortured the officers did let me get in my car to change my clothes and get some clean one. The ones I just picked from the laundry. On the top of all the horrors that they inflicted upon me, the Officer Youngs had the audacity to say “You better not pull the fucking bullshit that you pulled the night before and piss in my car.”  I am not paraphrasing I am quoting his literal words.

The officer from GVPD booked me for possession of drugs which I didn't have, but my possessions were clearly in evidence, he took my jewelry which he confiscated from my purse without my consent and without any warrant and placed them into the evidence box, even though that jewelry belonged to me and my daughter, I said that then and I’ll stand by it now till my last breath.

My vehicle was towed off from the premises, and my locked glove box was searched with neither my permission or any warrant. Even officer soles stated that in his report that at the beginning of the traffic stop, the car was tossed and illegally search even when the owner didn't give them her consent not, they had any warrant. It should not have even been towed from private property and there is no law that dictates that the police can do it without a warrant, which is still in possession of the towing company, but according to Ron’s Towing, it is lost but somehow still in my name with no abandonment paperwork filed by GVPD or Ron’s Towing to the state.  I feel like there are a few things to talk about, including my car, the inventory reports for my car for two separate occasions which I have yet to get after asking numerous times.

Now, please pay special attention to my arrest on the stealing charge it seems very odd that I was bonded out of Ray Co. on 8-8-2017 on separate charges and then I was made to wait for GVPD to pick me up several hours later only to be unlawfully detained. Then I was taken back to GVPD only to be sent to BSPD where they apparently shelter their felons and criminals awaiting to be transferred. I was held on a 24-hour hold where I was still being unlawfully detained for what the official reports are saying that I was already arrested for. It became even odder when I realized that I spent that much time in captivity and didn't get to meet a detective yet. The police confiscated my belongings referring them as stolen and even returned them to the alleged victim even before I was charged with a crime.

To make you realize that those items weren't stolen and were mine;

I can forward and will send pictures that I have with my daughter and I wearing the jewelry, including the cross from her Holy Communion that she worn months before the crime, I apparently committed only to be given to the incorrect owner.

You can See Photos! By clicking on it.

That is what I suffered, and I Thank you for your attention in this matter. . I know that I would be retaliated by the GVPD and would be defied with all the viciousness from them, but I will not back down and will not abandon my mission to bring these culprits forward to you, because I believe it can do that to me then they can do that to anyone. I'm very afraid not only for my own safety, my 16-year-old daughter, and every woman out there as well. Keeping the circumstances in mind and by experiencing myself at the hands of  GVPD I tried to go to them and for justice from them, and the system failed me. Although, of course, I would rather have felt safe enough to make a complaint in person, unfortunately, that is not the case without my own witnesses with me. It should be sad for all of us, especially myself who would never want another woman or girl to be mocked and harassed the way I was.  I was stripped of my car, my personal belongings, self-confidence, dignity and all faith in the Grain Valley Police Department and it's personal. Police are supposed to be our friends, our protectors but I believe some black sheep can stain an entire police department.

Cara

[carriesthewind]

Since people have been interested in this post (thank you all very much! It is very long so thank you for reading it all!), I thought I would do a follow up.

A couple days ago, the writer posted this in response to an ask letting her* know the asker had followed her onto a new fanfic archive:

The second paragraph is the important part here. It’s worth talking about because it helps demonstrate one way that misinformation can spread, and why I thought it was important to post my analysis of her response in the first place. As we look at this paragraph, my analysis is going to focus not on the writer’s motivations and thought process, but on the potential effect of this post on her audience.

First, the writer is now declaring that she is not angry at the suspension because, “Shit happens, y’know?” Now, while this new claim might be reflective of her personal truth (she may no longer personally be feeling anger at the suspension), the effect of this claim is to oppose the way her response has been characterized by outsiders, and therefore to potentially undermine everything those outsiders have to say. That characterization was how I started my original post: this writer is upset because she was suspended by AO3 for breaking the TOS. Since we read her original post before reading this follow up, we know that this characterization is accurate: while in her original post she was also angry because she alleges that her suspension hadn’t been investigated, much of her anger was focused on the fact that she was locked out of her account by the suspension and couldn’t directly and personally access her posted works.

But for a reader who is already inclined to believe her characterization of events because they are a fan, or a reader who has heard about the drama second-hand and this is the first post of hers they find, the effect of this claim is to cast doubt on anyone or anything that portrayed her as angry at the suspension.

This also serves to make her look more like the victim of the whole incident. It feels much more reasonable and much less selfish to be angry at the process, some underlying inconsistency or injustice, than at the outcome of her personal suspension. It also therefore may feel unfair that she was “mischaracterized” as acting selfishly.

Second, look at how her specific claims of mistreatment from the initial post have been condensed into generalized claims.

Her claims that AO3 “kidnapped” her property and that it didn’t let her delete her works against its TOS have been generalized into a claim that it isn’t safe to put new material on AO3 for some unspecified reason.

She says that her suspension wasn’t properly investigated, but doesn’t give any specifics beyond that. In her original post, she posits the specific claim that AO3 ignored her mitigating evidence, which was that an AO3 volunteer previously pre-screened all her material, that most of the alleged violations weren’t real violations, and that one alleged violation was a new rule that was not posted in the TOS.

She says that she has “valid concerns” that weren’t and aren’t being addressed, but she doesn’t list any of those concerns. If we look at her original response, we can see that in addition to the above issues, she claimed that the suspension was an example of draconian enforcement because her violations were posted a long time ago, that she wasn’t given a sufficient chance to comply with the TOS after being notified, that she wasn’t served with a sufficient warning, and that the reports were actually targeted harassment.

As we know, all of these “valid concerns” are incorrect. (If you want to know why, you can read the analysis of her original response above.) But these generalized claims are presented in her post as if they have already been evidenced elsewhere. For people who are already fans of hers and believe her claims of mistreatment, this response helps solidify that belief through repetition. But even for new readers, the fact that she presents her claims with such confidence may make them more likely to believe she has already provided evidence. Even if they don’t believe her claims without evidence, since she doesn’t give specifics, if someone only sees this post they may be inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she might be right, or that even if she’s wrong, she may be acting in good faith.

After all, you can’t prove that she doesn’t have valid concerns if she doesn’t say what those concerns are. It’s only through looking at and analyzing her original response to AO3’s letter that we can see that these claims are outright lies.

Even if a reader doesn’t entirely believe her, un-evidenced but seemingly sincere and theoretically valid claims like this can become part of that reader’s subconscious framework of belief. So that if they see similar claims from someone in the future, that reader may be more likely to believe those claims, even if the next person also has no actual evidence of mistreatment or impropriety. AO3 isn’t properly following its own TOS? Oh yeah, I remember that they did that to another writer! AO3’s abuse team is refusing to follow up on mitigating evidence? Yeah, I’ve heard that they do that. Hey, it’s a pretty extreme claim to say that the whole board is corrupt and targeting authors they don’t like - but then again, I’ve now heard multiple people talking about these kinds of problems, and everyone was trying to shut them up by just saying they were angry about being suspended, when they were actually just angry because they were being mistreated by the process!

I’m not saying her audience will inevitably believe un-evidenced claims like these. (I’m also not saying that it isn’t possible for this kind of mistreatment or impropriety to happen - but these claims need evidence.) And I certainly don’t mean to suggest that the writer must be intending to spread misinformation in this manner to her audience - her response can have effects beyond her personal intentions. But I hope I’ve helped show how an audience can be lead down that path of misinformation.

*The writer uses both they/them and she/her pronouns according to her bio, but since I wrote the original analysis, I’ve noticed that most people who appear to know her refer to her with she/her pronouns.

Hello tumblr! I am here to discuss some drama today! (Oh dear god I can't believe that this is what got me to finally join tumblr.)

As you may know, AO3 recently suspended a writer’s account, and the writer isn’t happy about it. They have made several public posts about it, included a very long post responding to the letter they received from AO3 in response to their appeal to lift the suspension. Now, I’m not particularly familiar with this writer. I’ve heard their name enough to recognize it, I know I have heard some rumors about them – some good, some bad. But I have never read their writing or their tumblr before, and I didn’t have any preconceived opinions about them.

But since this drama has entered my orbit from multiple sources, I decided to do a close read of their post responding to AO3. I do this fairly regularly, as a mental exercise to practice making myself a more careful consumer of media in general, social media in particular. But close-reading this particular post made me angry enough that felt the need to write up my analysis and share it.

A few disclaimers and notes before we begin:

First, I am just going to refer to the person under discussion as the “writer” – I include this person’s user name in a screenshot, so am not hiding their identity, but I’m not doing this to target them. This is an analysis of two of their posts, not of their life or online activity outside of the post.

Second, I am going to be giving the writer every benefit of the doubt I can, and am starting my reading by assuming they are acting in good faith.

Third, I am going to take the text under discussion under its own terms as much as possible, without referring to outside content. I am going to be analyzing two posts by the writer; the long post they made in response to AO3’s reply, and a shorter post that they made that long post in reply to. The exceptions to this will be the TOS of AO3, since they are central to the dispute, and a few other posts by the writer on the same subject. I will be using those other posts only when I need them to understand the writer’s argument in the main post we are looking at.  

Let’s begin.

There’s two things that jump out at me from this paragraph right away. First, if we look at AO3’s TOS, there is a clear path for filing an appeal, and there is no right to a response from being pinged on Tumblr or responding to messages through other venues. There is also no deadline for the team to respond to an appeal. In fact, the TOS repeatedly note that they cannot guarantee a speedy response. Given the size of the archive, five days seems far from unreasonable.

However, this waiting period would absolutely be frustrating, and it is entirely understandable that the writer would be frustrated and angry. Speaking personally, I know that I have angrily tried to contact a company via non-official means when I felt they had wronged me and were refusing to respond to my official messages. The writer isn’t doing anything wrong here by reaching out this way and being upset at the delay – but AO3 isn’t doing anything wrong by not replying to these messages, either.

Second, this sentence, “My legally copyrighted property under the terms of Fair Use is still in kidnapped status, which is not actually legal”? This sentence is nonsense. It is so nonsense that whenever I look away my brain rewrites it. It is so nonsense I am not going to even try to break down the very many ways it is wrong, because that would double the length of this monster of a post. I will instead just state: by agreeing to AO3's TOS, the writer has agreed to allow their account to be suspended under the TOS, and the writer’s work still belongs to the writer and can be removed (more on that later) and reposted (or not removed and reposted) anywhere else.

The important things about this sentence for our close reading are as follows: 1) the writer is using a bunch of legal jargon in a way that is irrelevant and inaccurate (the alternative, which is worse, is they are lying and they know it); 2) as a corollary, the writer is talking confidently and forcefully about the situation in ways that do not accurately describe the situation (either out of ignorance, confusion, or a deliberate desire to mislead); and 3) the writer is using charged and exaggerating language to describe the situation.

Number 1 will be important shortly; for now, just keep it in mind.

Number 2 doesn’t necessarily imply bad faith; as noted, they could be talking out of ignorance or misspeaking, or some combination of both, due to the emotionally charged situation. Even though they haven’t lost their content (because they haven’t), people’s writing is very important to them; it is understandable that someone who has lost some control over the distribution of their writing would feel upset! (Please note that this is true regardless of whether the suspension was appropriate, justified, or correct - punishments hurt, by definition!) Rather, it is important because it makes clear that even if the writer has best of intentions, the way they are writing about this situation is not entirely accurate. It is entirely possible that this is the only thing about their situation that they will be wrong about - especially since legal rights and issues are extremely complicated and most people struggle to fully understand them. However, it is still an early indication to keep our eye on, moving forward. (It is also worth noting that this kind of legal misrepresentation is extremely commonly used by people who are NOT acting in good faith. This alone is not enough to assume bad faith - again, legal issues are complicated - but it is something to keep an eye on when reading posts like this.)

Number 3 is referring mostly to the use of “kidnapped” to describe the status of their works. This is not remotely accurate, for reasons which I will dive into more later. It is, however, highly emotionally charged language that indicates a couple of possibilities, any or all of which may be present. First, it could indicate, like the last point, a writer who is (again, understandably!) upset and is expressing how the situation FEELS to them, even if that feeling doesn’t match reality. Secondly, it could be the writer trying to using metaphorical language to get the reader to understand how serious the situation feels to them. Third, it could indicate a desire (conscious or unconscious) to appeal to the reader’s emotions over their logic, so they will be more likely to go along with the writer’s characterization of the situation.

The overall impression from where we are starting is this: we have a writer who is (again, understandably) extremely upset at a suspension that may or may not be justified and appropriate - so far we have no evidence either way. We have likewise no evidence that either party is acting inappropriately. However, we do have indications that the writer appears to either not correctly understand, or is (accidentally or on purpose), mischaracterizing at least some elements of the situation.

So, let’s move on to the long post.

We start with the knowledge that we do not have AO3’s whole response; there are sections that are left out that may or may not be relevant. This isn’t necessarily bad or wrong - there may be lots of good reasons not to include the full text. However, it is worth keeping in mind when we are assessing the situation.

More important is the description of AO3’s letter as, “full of fun jargon.” We will review the provided text ourselves, but AO3 generally does an admirable job trying to use as little jargon and legalese as reasonable possible, and I would include the provided text of the response in that assessment. Still, given that is a formal response to a TOS violation appeal, it does use a lot of formal language and some legal language.

However, this is an interesting complaint for the writer to make, given Number 1 above (I promised we would come back to that!). It’s a sharp contrast for the writer to use lot of legal jargon to complain about AO3 and then turn around and promptly complain about AO3 using jargon. Again, this isn’t necessarily a sign of bad faith. It is entirely possible that the writer, as described above, is confused and upset and using language they think they understand (but don’t) to express their feelings, and since they don’t understand legal language, they see the AO3 response as including a lot of jargon. However, using charged legalistic language themselves while characterizing their opponent as using “jargon” is another flag to keep an eye on. Again, in the best case scenario, this is someone who is clearly quite (reasonably!) emotional and whose characterization of at least some aspects of the situation is questionable.

This response by the writer is….confusing?

The writer seems to be arguing that punishing them for failing to comply with the TOS makes them unable to comply with the TOS right away so therefore…people shouldn’t ever be suspended for commercial content violations? I don’t think this is what the writer is arguing, because it’s not reasonable (and in some of their posts, they make it clear that they don’t believe that), but I can’t make any other sense of this paragraph.

According to their TOS, if AO3 finds a sufficiently serious violation, it can hide or delete violating content. But based on the previous “kidnapped” comments, the writer would presumable be upset (is upset?) if the works were altered or removed from public view by AO3 unless they specifically asked them to. So I’m not sure what the writer would want AO3 to do in response to a commercial content-based TOS violation.

This first quoted paragraph is being positioned by the writer as indicating some problem with AO3’s process, either in general or in this specific case, but so far, there is no actual evidence of that.

I also want to note here – this paragraph seems to be confirming that the TOS violations were valid, and the writer is just disputing their seriousness, not their existence. But to be fair, I checked some of their other posts on the topic to confirm this reading. Although they dispute the interpretations of some of the reported violations as incorrect, they do admit that at least one of the reported violations was accurate.

We are not provided this mitigating information, but the writer will include some arguments later that would seem to be the mitigating evidence, and I will address it then. I will note here - it is very common for an aggrieved party to say that a system that punished them ignored evidence they presented. While sometimes this is true, often the system reviews the evidence they present, and decides not to rule in their favor anyway. Here, for example, we see that AO3’s response notes that the suspension will not be lifted unless the writer furnishes mitigating information “that would have changed our initial determination.” So AO3 might have ignored the mitigating information, or they might have reviewed it and determined it would not have changed their decision (e.g.: they already knew about it, it wasn’t determined credible, it wasn’t determined relevant, etc.). Also note that we, seeing the mitigating information, could think that AO3 was incorrect if they reviewed the proffered mitigating info and did not rescind the suspension, but that is not the same as AO3 ignoring it. We, as readers of the post, don’t know which of these options occurred - and neither does the writer. While it is understandable that the poster is not giving AO3 the same kind of good faith that we are trying to give them (aggrieved parties don’t have to assign good faith to people they believe have wronged them!), it once again colors our understanding of how the writer is characterizing AO3’s response.

This starts with an interesting claim! That is, that AO3 acknowledged in the letter that the writer has “a history of immediately complying.” This isn’t in the excerpt of the letter that we have. Because this claim is immediately below the above excerpt from AO3's letter, it appears that the writer is misconstruing the statement, “While we appreciate your willingness to remove the violating content immediately, you must first serve your suspension to its completion before you are able to edit your works.” This sentence isn’t claiming the writer has a history of complying, it is clearly responding to the writer’s stated willingness *in this case* to edit their content to comply. If the writer is deliberately misconstruing the letter this way, that’s deeply troubling, because it shows they are both trying to make AO3 look bad (see the rest of the paragraph) and twisting their own bad behavior (note that they here acknowledge past instances of breaking the TOS) in a way that makes them look good, actually (“assist[ing] the Archive in keeping things to their TOS standard”). This is really, really, bad behavior if it is deliberate. It would be a deliberate lie to preempt their audience’s recognition of their misdeeds and frame themself as a victim of a malicious actor.

HOWEVER. That is not the only interpretation of this claim. The writer is not necessarily deliberately misconstruing the letter - again, they are reasonably upset at the situation, they’ve stated they have found the letter to be full of jargon (and thus potentially may be struggling to parse some of it), and it is possible they are responding quickly without carefully reading the letter. Alternatively, they have stated that they are only posting certain sections of the letter - it is entirely possible that AO3 acknowledges “a history of immediately complying” somewhere else in the letter. Now, even in that case, the writer is clearly attempting to reframe evidence of their past violations as evidence of their victimhood (promptly removing TOS violating content is the bare minimum of what should be expected by an AO3 user). Again, that may be a genuine (and natural!) emotional reaction, but we continue to see the thread that the writer’s characterization of (now multiple) aspects of the situation are both inaccurate and biased to see themselves as victimized.

Which leads us to the poster’s response to the next excerpt.

Here the writer acknowledges again that they have at least one previous TOS violation. They include an except from AO3’s letter that clearly shows that they were explicitly told that failing to remove commercial promotion material from their account might result in a temporary suspension. Noticeably, although they have and will continue to frame themselves as the victim of an unfair process: 1) they do not dispute they were previously in violation of the policy, and were let off with just a warning. 2) They do not dispute that since that warning, they continued to have commercial promotion material on their account. 3) They do not dispute the content of the warning. 4) They do not dispute that they received or understood this warning.

Instead, the poster disputes that the warning…wasn’t official enough? They do not indicate how or what AO3 should have done to make it “official” - likely because it is extremely clear that this was a previous warning, and spelling out an alternative would make the absurdity of this complaint clear. It is at this point that we can no longer proceed assuming that the poster is writing solely in good faith. While we cannot assume they are deliberately trying to mislead their audience or that they do not have legitimate complaints, they are at least deeply in denial and stuck in a victimization perspective and that must inform our reading of their post.

Their second complaint with this section is just as ridiculous and telling as their first. AO3’s abuse policy is NOT a 3 strikes policy, as it is explicitly designed for flexibility, so that an account may be let off with multiple warnings, or may be suspended at the first violation, depending on the assessed severity of the violation. Nothing in the quoted section of the letter contradicts this flexibility. In fact, it directly supports the existence of this flexibility, by writing that further TOS violations “might,” not “will,” trigger a suspension. The writer is just wrong, and we can see they are wrong by simply reading the text they are replying to. This can only be read as either a deliberate mischaracterization of both the letter and the TOS, or as someone so far in denial that their characterization of the situation cannot be relied upon and no information they give can be fully trusted without external supporting evidence.

(As a note on my own biases in writing this analysis: this is where I personally ran out of patience with the writer, although I have tried to maintain a more even tone in this analysis.)

The writer may still have legitimate critiques of AO3’s actions and response (for example, they can still argue that such a flexible system is bad in general, or that there were mitigating circumstances that should have caused the suspension to be lifted/not imposed in their particular case), but they are not, in this section at least, making such a legitimate argument.

Their critique of the non time-limited nature of AO3’s response to TOS violations also indicates a fundamental misunderstanding (whether genuine or deliberate) of the *problem* of a TOS violation, especially of a commercial promotion TOS violation. AO3 is an *archive* - it explicitly exists to preserve fan works and provide access to them. It doesn’t matter, from AO3’s perspective, when a commercial promotion is first posted - it matters that it is currently accessible. A commercial promotion violation does not occur solely when a user posts it - it is an ongoing violation that continues to occur for as long as the promotion remains accessible. Furthermore, the structure of AO3 is such that it relies on individual users to maintain their works in compliance with the TOS. We can imagine an archive that works differently. This hypothetical archive could have works reviewed by archive staff before being accepted into entry in the archive, would not allow works to be modified except with the approval of staff, and would allow works to be modified by staff without the users’ knowledge or consent. However, 1) this is not the TOS the writer agreed to when they posted their works on AO3 and 2) given this writer’s expressed desire for control over their own work in this very post, this would not be an archive the writer would want to use.

People can still have legitimate disagreements about whether and how the date that a violation was originally posted on should affect sanctions for that violation, and disagreements over whether the sanctions were appropriately applied in any particular case. It isn't a problem for the author to assert that they think AO3's policy should be different. It is a problem for them to mischaracterize what the policy is and mislead their audience about why a policy exists.

Once again, AO3 is describing a policy that is entirely reasonable. However, in this section the writer finally moves on to the potentially legitimate claim that the policy is being enforced in a draconian way. They advance two arguments to support this claim.

This is actually one of their better responses, because their arguments, while very hostile, are potentially legitimate complaints that support their claim of draconian enforcement in their case! (Please note I am not asserting their complaints are accurate, however - more on that in a moment.)

The first claim is that an official AO3 staff member previously checked every one of their existing fics to try to ensure that they did not violate AO3’s TOS. The writer relied on this assurance going forward, so should not be sanctioned with a suspension. This is a part of the post that, in the interests of good faith, I will discuss with the added context of another post by this writer, since the claim isn't fully or clearly expressed in the above post, and it is their best argument in favor of their mistreatment. I am also going to assume that this was the mitigation that they referred to submitting to AO3 and claim was ignored.

If the poster is characterizing this previous interaction correctly, they have legitimate reasons to be upset, and I would agree with them that this is the sort of mitigating evidence I would expect would cause a suspension to be lifted if I was the person making decisions.

…here’s the problem, though. While I would agree with them that this would be a draconian application of AO3’s polices…it wouldn’t be a violation of AO3’s stated policies in any way. If the AO3 abuse staff member made assurances that to the writer that all their posted content was clear of TOS violations, that would be counter to AO3's TOS, which makes it clear that it does not do pre-emptive reviews. It would be legitimately frustrating for this writer to find out that the promise it relied on was incorrect and be punished after relying on it. However, it is impossible for me not to see that from AO3’s perspective, if this staff member really did give this assurance, it means that the writer was given an assurance of preferential treatment over other users. There is a good argument that to continue to give them preferential treatment (that is, to rescind the suspension based on the preferential treatment) would only compound the harm. It’s a legitimately tough situation for both parties to be in. I ultimately continue to see no misconduct on the part of AO3, except potentially in allowing an official staff member to give misleading preferential treatment (I say potentially because we have no further information about what actions AO3 took to correct this harm/punish the staff member), and also understand why the writer is reasonably furious at the archive.

…or rather, that would be the problem, if we could continue to read this post solely in good faith. Unfortunately, by the time we reach this explanation, as stated above, we know that the writer is either deliberately lying in this post, or deeply in denial leading to them mischaracterization the situation. Because of what we have already seen, we cannot take their description of the alleged staff member or their actions as accurate without at least some external supporting evidence.

We are given no such evidence, either in this post or in any of the others I have reviewed. Rather, the provided evidence contradicts it, albeit subtly. Remember that we noted how the poster did not dispute the content of the August 2019 warning AO3 sent them? That warning clearly stated that failing to remove all commercial promotion from their account might result in a suspension. That warning, from AO3 (not a single independent staff member), along with the clear TOS statement that it does not do preemptive reviews, puts the responsibility for removing the violating content squarely on the writer. If that warning wasn’t “official” enough for them to take it seriously…why were they willing to rely on the word of a single person who was breaking AO3 official policy by purporting to prescreen content?

While I lost my patience at the previous paragraph, as noted above, this response is why I actually decided to write and post this analysis. Casually reading this post, the writer’s description of events here sound deeply sympathetic and would lead a casual reader to see them a victim and AO3 as a villain. It is natural (and a good instinct!) to trust people when they tell you they are being mistreated. Unfortunately, sometimes people who feel that they have been mistreated are just seeing the consequences of their own actions catch up to them.

The second potential legitimate complaint is the implied assertion that their violation was not really serious, and should not really be considered a TOS violation (“figurative, imaginative caffeine.”) Unfortunately, the writer has already admitted repeatedly, both in this post and outside of it, that they were in violation of the TOS. Thus, instead of this being a legitimate complaint, it is another indication that the poster is inappropriately mischaracterizing themself to their audience as a maligned victim and AO3 as a villain.

Oh hey, AO3’s letter is reiterating everything I just explained about prescreening! I wonder how the poster will respond.

I’m trying not to be too snarky here, but that is a really damming failure to respond.

So instead of talking about the substantive issue at hand, let’s address this wild change of subject, I guess.

This is again an instance of the writer portraying themselves as a victim, either because they are deliberately trying to maliciously mislead their audience or because they truly believe it. Just to be clear - they are claiming that they are being targeted because someone noticed and reported admitted TOS violations on their “two…most well-know fics in two major fandoms.” If they are claiming they are being targeted by someone acting in bad faith, and therefore the (again, admittedly legitimate!) violation reports are a form of targeted harassment, wouldn’t they have a much better claim if the violations were reported on fics with very low hit counts (so that someone would be less likely to randomly find them)?

And a side note - if these TOS violations were on the poster’s “most well-known fics” in “major fandoms,” that goes directly to the relevance of their ‘the violations were posted a long time ago’ mitigation claim. A well-known fic is more likely to be currently receiving continuing views (remember, the harm the violations are causing is based on people seeing them), and an author who is continuing to get hits/kudos/comments on that work would presumably be aware of its continued popularity, and thus should be aware of the need, after receiving a warning, to make sure to personally review it for violations.

Again, we’ve already addressed this issue repeatedly. So I will just note here that the writer is claiming that it is “actually fucking ridiculous” not to grandfather in active TOS violations. Imagine making this argument in any other context. Imagine an author has a book that they wrote 14 years ago but is still selling. Imagine someone notices this year, for the first time, that the author has extensively plagiarized copyrighted material. They alert the victim, who brings a suit, and the publisher stops publishing the author’s book and refuses to publish any of their other book as well. Does the writer think it is “actually fucking ridiculous” for the publisher to cease publishing the author, simply because the author was able to avoid detection for so long?

(Since I’m not doing much analysis here, let’s talk instead about what the purpose of this portion of the poster’s response might be. I’m putting this as an aside, because this isn’t strictly part of the close reading, and it is absolutely not it the spirit of good faith I am still trying to use. We’re going to look at the effect of this section in context. Let’s start by analyzing the use of the term “you” in this post. When the post began, the writer used “you” to refer to themself (“no matter how willing you are to fix it…etc.”). In the same section, the writer switches to using “you” to refer to AO3 (“if you have fans…”). In the third section, they start by using “you” to refer to AO3 (“You guys are the ones…”) and then switches in the next sentence to directly address the readers (“if any of you following me”). This switch isn’t a casual fluid switch like it was previously - instead, it is positioned in a sentence directly warning the readers that AO3 might come after them next. In the following section, they don’t use the second person, but they do imply (nonsensically) that someone is targeting them with these TOS violation reports. We then catch up with the above section - “they can and will go after you.” Note that the post starts directly addressing the reader at the same time that it builds up an escalating threat. This creates a sense of fear and camaraderie with the writer, positioning reader and writer as “us” against a malicious “them” who is not just targeting the writer, but the readers as well. This makes the reader more sympathetic to the writer, and more likely to believe their claims; after all, “you” know you’re not breaking AO3's TOS, and if “you” did, it would be an accident. How ridiculous for AO3 come after someone like “you” - someone who has broken the TOS multiple times in the past in the same way and has explicitly…been…warned…hmmm…how much like “you” is the poster, actually?)

Anyway,

I’m going to reiterate what I said after the writer’s response to the previous warning letter: what should AO3 have written to make this a warning that the writer would accept as legitimate? This is a bit longer and more detailed, but substantially the same as what was reportedly written in the previous letter. In that context, the poster said it didn’t look like an official warning, it wasn’t clear or serious enough. In this context, substantially the same content in substantially the same tone is recontextualized as too serious, a threat that secretly means AO3 already plans on banning them permanently. To borrow a phrase…"this is actually fucking ridiculous."

Again, if we are reading the post in the best possible light, this is someone who is so emotionally distraught that they have descended into paranoia and are unable to correctly characterize the situation. Alternatively, this reads like someone who deliberately characterizing AO3’s responses to best achieve their own ends. They want this suspension to appear unjustified and unjustifiable, which means they can’t have received clear previous warnings for the same TOS violations they are suspended for - so there was only one warning that wasn’t clear or official enough to give them any real notice. Now, they want to appear as a victim who is being targeted by a system that has it out for them, no matter what they do - so substantially the same warning is a threat that indicates an intent to ban them regardless of what they do next.

And we are back to the beginning: not understanding the first thing about the law and using (at this point I feel safe in saying) deliberately charged language to describe the situation.

(And mischaracterizing the text that is LITERALLY RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM – AO3 isn’t saying it will take a week to respond! It is giving you a week to comply once your suspension is lifted! What do you want it to do, impose further sections if you don’t comply within 12 hours?!?! I mean, if that’s what you’re asking for...)

AO3 is not taking control of the writer’s works. It has control how it chooses to display and store works that the writer has granted it permission to display and store. This is all very clearly laid out in the TOS.

We’ve already addressed that the writer does NOT know that AO3 did not investigate their alleged mitigation evidence. The writer is once again positioning a failure to agree with their position that the suspension should be lifted as a failure by AO3 to read or consider their evidence.

I’m not going to address most of the specifics they list, because I would basically just be repeating myself over and over again with more details and this analysis is already long enough. These specifics might be important, except that the poster has already admitted that they did violate the TOS. Even assuming they are characterizing their email, AO3’s full response, and the “Not Actually Violations” correctly, it doesn’t matter for the purpose of whether they violated the TOS (again) and received a legitimate suspension.

The only specific I will address is their blatant lie at the end: the TOS specifically bans all commercial promotion, NOT just self-promotion. The writer is explicitly, obviously lying - not just misunderstanding, not just mischaracterizing, flat out lying.

We have something in common, finally - I’m really offended too.

So I looked at some other posts for more context about this comment on deleting a work, just to make sure I wasn’t mischaracterizing: the writer apparently, fed up with AO3, wants to delete their works prior to the end of their suspension. Their “inability” to do so appears to be a major basis for their “kidnapping” claims above. This, once again, might be a legitimate complaint - AO3’s TOS does confirm that a suspended user retains the rights to remove their work (subject to certain data storage exceptions to meet AO3’s obligations).

Unfortunately, the poster’s next sentence makes it clear this compliant is not legitimate. The TOS are explicit that the way a suspended user can delete their works is through contacting AO3 administrators. If the poster had requested such delegations and been refused, AO3 would have violated their own TOS. Instead, the user states they just asked AO3 to lift the suspension. There is zero evidence that they asked AO3 to delete their works, and instead are mischaracterizing AO3’s refusal to lift their suspension as a refusal to delete their works, both in this post and elsewhere. I feel like a broken record at this point, but once again, they are mischaracterizing a very clear situation to make themselves look like a victim and AO3 a villain.

An appropriate gif of a petulant, spoiled child to match this closing paragraph. I don’t think I need to say anything else.

[fair-fae]

Apparently if a man wolf-whistles after a woman it's sexual harassment. While I can see it's annoying, I think it's not 'sexual harassment'. Yes, I'm a woman and I've been whistled after but I shrug it off in most cases. I think everyone is getting too sensitive about the subject of 'sexual harassment' and it's close in losing credibility. It might just me be though... What is your opinion in this matter? Am I taking this too lightly?

It can range from annoying to downright scary if you’re walking alone because you never know if it will end at just wolf-whistling and cat-calling, or if it will devolve into being insulted, followed, assaulted, etc. which unfortunately does happen. If there is anyone getting too sensitive about “sexual harassment” (can’t say I’ve ever really seen that, personally), I don’t believe this is an example of that. Ultimately, I think the best way to define sexual harassment is anything that could allude an answer “yes” to the question of, “Is expressing my sexual interest to this person likely to make them uncomfortable, and is it still worth that outcome?” because that is the wrong answer 100% of the time.If it doesn’t bother you and you don’t consider it harassment, that’s totally cool! But that doesn’t mean anyone who does feel it’s sexual harassment is incorrect or any less valid in their opinion. Just because you can shrug something off and just because it doesn’t bother you beyond annoyance doesn’t necessarily mean that thing is right or okay, i.e. I can shrug off random anon hate I get and not be upset beyond a fleeting feeling of annoyance, but it is still harassment and it’s still not okay to send hatemail and threats.

[knightofbalance-13]

http://sssn-neptune-vasilias.tumblr.com/post/167727487548/caddeter-sokumotanaka-knightofbalance-13

Dude, you need to rethink what you’re doing before jumping in like this. This post doesn’t have much to do with RWBY or RWDE really, just a lot of faulty arguments.

1- call attention to the fact he believes that just because someone has committed what he BELIEVES to be a logical fallacy that their argument is suddenly void and invalid which in and of itself is the “fallacy fallacy.” He firmly believes that by pointing out a fallacy he’s completely destroyed the argument which is not only incorrect because the inherent lack of stated fallacy by Kob, but also because an argument that presents a fallacy is not inherently incorrect. But only someone actually familiar with these fallacies would know that and kob has proven time and again he is not

Incorrect. Fallacy fallacy implies that my conclusion to the fallacy is that he is wrong.

But if you take a look at what I said:

Here we seen an example of the person attacking the person and not the argument which is known as “Ad Hominin” while using loaded words to sway public opinion to their side known as “Manipulative language”. Not even a paragraph in and the person has already shown an inability to even debate properly.

I never dismissed their argument. While you could say I was looking down on the argument for being fallacious, I am not dismissing it as I have an example of me pointing of a logical fallacy and dismissing the argument.

Now we see a use of the logical fallacy known as “Buzzwords” as we seen here with “gaslighting” which is a logical fallacy used to sow distrust in people by making them question their own memory and sanity. However, we do not see the OP at all question the reblogger’s sanity or memory. Thus the above is simply using the negative implications of the word to slander the OP.

But here, I show why the argument is incorrect as the argument at and does not connect to what their opponent is saying.

The two are clearly different from each other because the second is about disproving an argument a nd the other is about showing the fallacies in it because the first is a judgement about a subjective look at OP’s arguments when in reality, there is no way to get an objective view because even asking OP could result in them giving a biased answer. There is no way to argue it because every argument would be a statement of opinion. So0 instead, I showed that my opponent was using fallacies in order to show why their arguments are untrustworthy.

2- Kob’s so wrapped up in his crusade against RWDE and has YET to realize that he’s fighting- not a hivemind of people all with similar thoughts and opinions and a desire to engage him in debate- but DOZENS of different bloggers all with different and often conflicting opinions. He’s so concerned with “Rwde being the worst members of the fndm” that he hasn’t actually realized that “Rwde” IS NOT A PERSON. It’s not even a concept. IT’S A TAG USED BY PEOPLE TO ARCHIVE THEIR NEGATIVE COMMENTARY. The phrase “I hate Jaune Arc for no reason in particular” is just as likely to be in the RWDE tag as a twelve page thesis on why Jaune Arc is a bad character who’s done nothing but detract from the show. But Kob hasn’t realized this yet and lumps people’s shitposts and general negative commentary with actual think-pieces and assumes that because the op tagged RWDE that they’re somehow related or even aware of each other. He’s created an “us vs them” mentality where the “them” is anyone who’s ever used this tag for any reason whatsoever and it’s ASTOUNDING how obtuse he has to be to not have realized that he’s fighting a losing battle against a TAG especially considering his own CRTQ tag failed to gain any real traction outside of his own group

....

Appeal to motive.

You are dismissing my arguments simply because of what you assume my motive is. And while this does look like a fallacy fallacy: Look at the above and tell me where an argument pertaining to my arguments outside of their motive exists.

The answer is: nowhere. There entire paragraph here is an argument about my motive and not my argument. It basically boils down to “Since KOB has a motive against the RWDE tag, then his entire argument is invalid!” with no other arguments. 

And while this might be worth looking into if my entire post was about the RWDE tag: it’s not. In fact, I only refer to a group ONCE.

I do declare: Shouldn’t that line of reasoning apply to the entirety of the group you are defending? They exhibit the exact same behavior as you accuse the OP and unlike the OP, the group here has a history of lying and attacking and is widely regarded as the worst of this here fandom. So perhaps you should heed your own advice?

And the fact of the matter is: Tis only tangently connects to the RWDE tag. People who think that the show belongs to them, in the RWDE tag or not, are in fact the worst people in the fandom. It doesn’t matter if they like RWDE, hate it or is even knowledgeable about them: Because of their tendency to force their opinions on other people as well as their massive hostility and entitlement makes them the worst of the fandom. RWDE has this aspect but they don’t have sole ownership of it.

This argument doesn’t even connect directly to RWDE nor is there any evidence I was referring to rwde. This is just about arguing a supposed motive to dismiss my arguments without addressing them. And while I may do it and I will work on that, that doesn’t give them the right to do it. Just means we’re both wrong.

3- “no such thing as a bad trope” while I am oh so disturbingly inclined to agree with him on this he fails to realize that his “tropes are tools” statement literally creates the next argument “these tropes are incorrectly utilized” which has been a HUGE problem for this damn show from the beginning. This is something that the crew have admitted themselves and something that’s widely known to be true “the tropes in RWBY often distract from the central plot in a negative way” but Kob will INSIST on sealioning and pretending he has no idea that this issue exists and force you to explain every tiny detail and fight you the entire time as if any intellectual debate can be formed against someone who hasn’t yet grasped simple facts such as “Jaune stalked and harassed Weiss during v2” or “the RNJR components of v4 were largely filler providing little to no support to the overall plot of the story” OR “the handling of TWF subplot raises uncomfortable and disconcerting issues with people who’ve had to fight for their rights in a similar manner to the Faunus and TWF.” These are basic facts about this show and Kob REFUSES to so much as entertain the idea that they might be correct and it’s impossible to have a civil discussion with someone who refuses to accept the truth in favor of praising their favorite show.

... But that wasn’t the point.

If you take a look at the post I was responding to:

And here we witness one @siennataurus skillfully demonstrating the Stan Power of “Disregarding The Fact That People Are Allowed To Have And Express Negative Opinions Regarding, And Dissatisfaction With, The Media They Consume.” Astounding! Though immediately following it up with such a badly botched attempt at obvious gaslighting really detracts from the overall quality of the Stanning.

P.S. Sienna. Dear. Deliberately going out of your way to seek out content that disturbs you, to the point where it obviously causes you psychological distress, is an extremely unhealthy and terribly immature behavior. Just sayin’. You might want to discuss your anger addiction with someone before it inevitably escalates, for the sake of your own well-being.

(P.P.S. I don’t even go here and I know for a fact that I could do a better job of writing the show in question here. Mainly because, y’know, my intellectual and emotional development didn’t come to a screeching halt at the tender age of 11; also because I’m not an actual piece of shit and I’m capable of recognizing the fact that certain tropes and behaviors are really shitty and should be avoided at all costs.)

They never refer to the execution of RWBY’s tropes but JUST the tropes themselves. I am not arguing the execution because the person I am arguing against is not arguing the execution. They are arguing certain tropes as a whole are wrong so I argued against that statement and that statement alone. This is just Moving The Goalposts , demanding that I argue more and more points when the initial point was adequately debunked without acknowledging it was debunked. I do have to go any further than this simply because your argument at it’s base is wrong.

Tl;DR: Kob is a mess who refuses to understand the basics of the tools he attempts to use and only seeks to use them in order to defeat his opponent- and like an untrained civillian presented with an armory against an enemy, will never learn the tactical advantage the tried and true Glock-9 will have over the flashy gold plated SMG who’s safety is on

...

This analogy has nothing to do with what you’ve said. This implies that I use fallacies as a flashy weapon unskillfully but you never debunk the way I use the fallacies nor how I used the wrong aside from the first post.

And the ironic thing is: You seem to be the one concerned with appearance over substance when I am not. You use fallacy fallacy incorrectly and in the process, making an entire argument you made turn against you while I just used them to show scummy methods. You also go on to arguing my motive when not only did my motive have nothing to do with my argument thus you were committing Fallacy fallacy yourself but there was no proof that the motive you said I had was what I had and you had no other argument in that. And the third time is you using Moving The Goalposts while not addressing my argument against the person I was arguing.

In short: You only barely address what I am saying and not once did you argue me directly, instead being vague or talking about subjects that don’t matter.

There’s a reason why you have to keep a clear head when arguing people: This and myself are reasons why.

[gciltyascharged]

Name: Mitchell “Mitch” Young Age: 18 Sexuality: Bisexual Height: 5′11 Birthday: July 30th Ethnicity: Caucasian Nationality: American Scar(s): Knife wound on both front and back shoulder blade on left side (stabbed by intruder), long scarring on right calf from back of knee down to ankle (received from ex), scalp (received from ex), below jaw bone to the middle on left side of neck (survival au) Mental Illnesses/Disorders: ADHD Inattentive Type, Stage Fright (subset of glossophobia), PTSD (survival au ; knives thrust at him elicit a reaction) Residence: Ericson’s Boarding School for Troubled Youth (Texas Two)

Personality:

Described as a “dick sometimes” by his peers, Mitch exudes the aura of a rugged youth who requires a serious attitude adjustment. Although he can be rather confrontational when angered or frustrated, he’s not inherently a bad person by heart ; if he feels anyone has wronged the people he cares for, even if he seems like he hates them, he’ll go out of his way to ensure that whoever hurt them or wronged them gets a taste of blood in their mouth before the day’s through -- call him a bit protective but don’t say it to his face unless you want to have him tell you to shut up.

Bio:

Raised in a suburb by his dad, Mitchell always held a fierce temper and energy to spare within him ; when it came to the neighbor boys who hated him the moment he moved in, his fists would fly practically everyday. Tired of the constant black eyes, his father purchased him a chemistry set to have him occupy his time wisely, hoping it would make him square up and want to do something with his life that was considered “productive.” Instead, this just gave Mitch the absolute means to learn the best ways to make bombs -- his first being to accidentally blow up the garage.

This just led to rumors circulating as the kids heard the explosions nearly every day around the junkyard. Calling him a terrorist in the making and sometimes throwing rocks at him, they were just antagonizing a ticking time bomb. One day the bomb went off and Mitch went and beat down the wrong kid. This kid being the son of the principal of his old school. It wasn’t as if the kid didn’t have it coming with the constant harassment, but Mitch’s actions led to him breaking his arm and tearing a CHUNK from the other boy’s ear and he threatened to ACTUALLY blow up his home if he ever came near him again ; the principal told his dad that he’d have to deal with his child, because there really was no place for someone like him there. Fearing his reputation within the community would become tarnished by Mitch’s actions, he decided to adhere to the whims of the influential figure before him.

Nine years old and he was sent off to Ericson’s Boarding School for Troubled Youth. At first, the idea of transferring schools didn’t bother him, because Mitch just didn’t outwardly care about the fact he’d be attending some other place ; it meant he’d just meet kids who wouldn’t call him names like he’d been subjected to (at least he could finally be rid of the terrorist one). No, what led him to become against the entire thing was when he overheard his father inside the office talking to the headmaster ; words were eagerly exchanged between the duo, his father asking what led to Mitch running down the hall in a fit: “How much do I actually NEED to visit him?” This place wasn’t just a boarding school for him ; this place was where he’d be abandoned ; the first day there, he’d already fallen into disrepair, curling into himself at one of the picnic tables around the courtyard to avoid his father, the adults, or just about anyone...

A few kids saw him alone, bruised, busted lip, and thought him a weakling -- an easy target for bullying. Needless to say, their assumptions were incorrect and black eyes were exchanged with them fleeing as Mitch, once more, sat down to hide his head within his knees for the next hour, until his father would approach him to tell him he was planning to leave, placing a folder down beside his son. The last words ever exchanged between him and the man before him were bitter, snapped with curt embrace: “Go die.” 

At first, Mitch really only defended himself at the school, seeing no reason to even consider the other kids as someone worth while -- that was until he met a small child there. Seeing a group of boys gathering around someone in the courtyard, he’d rolled his eyes and decided to see what was happening ; it’s when he noticed that this bully victim was actually just a child barely even able to speak up for himself and only seconds went by before one of the boys there felt his arm yanked behind his back and thrown back, Mitch battering down the kids around this small child -- this tiny and defenseless kid. By the name of Willy, this four year old kid elicited a response in Mitch that he hadn’t really thought of before then: if parents were going to just up and abandon their FOUR YEAR OLD child HERE instead of taking care of him themselves, then he’d be a damn better figure in his life... 

Nobody touched Willy without Mitch knowing about it ; nobody got near this kid without a frown forming on the other boy’s face. He’d look after him, even when the apocalypse started soon after, he’d keep him safe and make sure that anyone who tried something would get theirs. Nobody really touched anyone that Mitch became protective over, which, after the apocalypse began, became anyone who showed him any bit of kindness either BEFORE it all started or AFTER it started.